Elounda Gulf Villas

Overpriced, simple food selection, no room service at all (although stated on this 5-star hotel’s website)! Our 8-night stay in the 5-star Hotel „Elounda Gulf Villas“ in Crete, Greece, was the most disappointing and stressful vacation experience ever. It started with a different room than booked/confirmed, because it was occupied by other guests. Their so-called „upgrade“ because of the unavailable room, was a clear downgrade for us. We asked them why the „upgrade“, and they said because they are not fully booked and wanted to do us a favour. But we complained and insisted to get our booked/confirmed/pre-paid room and only then they honestly said that someone else got our room. So our first day/night was not relaxing at all. After talking to the manager on the 2nd day and as the other guests checked-out we were luckely able to move into our booked room around 3pm on day 2.  Here is a list of the other issues: - no room-service at all!! - not even a mini-bar in the villa - lunch only till 4pm, then 3 hours break and dinner (simple, small buffet) from 7pm - for lunch they ONLY serve a club-sandwich and a greek salat, AT EVERY SINGLE DAY!! - the breakfast buffet (from 8:30-11:30) offered a solid 3- to 4-stars hotel selection, without á la carte options you typically get in a 5-star hotel - first 5-star hotel we visited in our life without any sparkling wine or champagne at breakfast, no french toast, no eggs benedict, nothing to order besides the breakfast buffet. Also usually 5-star hotels have that certain extra, the little details, but they not even recognized/wished us a Happy Birthday although we augmented our villa with respective decoration - the dinner buffet offered a very small selection of food, nothing á la carte - they forgot to refill our in-room coffee capsules at 2 days (we had to call them twice, after waiting 30 minutes, to get it) - the in-room safe actually is a joke; it was just loose in the wardrobe and you can take it with you; I‘m not kidding  - the prices at the hotel’s Argo Restaurant and Pool Bar for drinks/lunch/dinner are 3x to 5x higher than the prices we experienced in the other close 5-star hotels where we enjoyed awesome food/drinks since we wanted to eat fresh local meat and fish (which seems almost impossible at the Elounda Gulf Villas) - besides the disappointing hotel, you cannot rely on the opening hours of the Elounda‘s supermarkets/minimarkets and it took us 1 hour from hotel to the next open minimarket and back to buy some food and drinks - basically we were trapped in a never-seen „vacation“-situation with more distress than at work. We had to complain 8 times in the first 3 days and then got sick of complaining and went out to the handful of other 5-star hotels (that are in walking distance) to eat & drink.  - It was not worth the money and I personally suffered due to the very limited healthy food options at our hotel. - our 9th complaint was actually on the final day since we asked to pickup our 4 heavy p