Pontikonisi Hotel & Suites

I have mixed feelings about this hotel. Firstly I’ll start with the positives:
- The biggest plus about this hotel was the private beachfront. The sun loungers were normally easy to secure for us, if you go straight after breakfast. You could then just go straight into the sea and even swim to a nearby island and back which is a great experience.
- the view from the seafront hotel room was also lovely and really nice to wake up to in the morning.
- the bar on the roof also had a lovely view.
-finally, I’ve seen a lot of complaints about airplane noise but this did not wake me up at all during the stay, despite being a light sleeper.

Now there were some negatives to consider about the hotel:
-the room was very old, from the carpets to the air-con and the bathroom.
-Particularly the bathroom was pretty rubbish, when sat on the toilet you would have the shower curtain touching you. And for women it is not practical to do the ‘great shave’ in such a small shower that floods the room constantly.
- The air-con was quite an old unit and left us feeling a bit rough in the mornings, this hasn’t been an issue with us with more up to date air-con machines.
- the rooftop bar had a really poor selection of foods and was overpriced. Everyday when I would ask they would be out of certain drinks or things like the sorbet.

Overall there are positives and negatives to consider. It was nice to visit and we enjoyed our stay but we would probably not return again, partly due to not much to do in the area.

I stayed at this hotel for three nights with my sister (25 September-28 September 2024) and I have both positive and negative points to mention in my review; I will try to be as detailed as possible, so that people that are coming to this section to get information on the place will be able to have a general idea of it.
Starting from the negative points, the facility has some very old rooms, like the one that has been assigned to us, and some very new ones, which means that if you are unlucky you will end up in a room whit old furnishments and stained walls like it happened to us, plus we were Booking.com guests so I do not understand according to which logic they assigned us the worst room since they knew I would review them; secondly, I understand that inconveniences may happen, but during our 3 nights stay one day there was no electricity for six hours and the following day no water for circa three hours, which shows a lack of general organization from the management, since we later discovered that the streets in the arounds were covered with notices that the area would be left without electrical power and water for maintenance jobs, which means that the hotel manager was aware of the situation from one or two days before at least and he did not provide electrical generators nor water supplies on time to avoid any incovenience to his guests, leaving us in a big big inconvenience; if I pay for a room, the first thing I expect to find with it besides a bed is power and running water to wash myself with.
Thirdly, the staff is split in very nice people but also less nice ones; in the morning in which there was no eletrical power, I personally asked to the breakfast manager if I could get some juice as the distributor machine was not working, imagining that he would go to the kitchen and bring a bottle of juice for me to be able to drink it and pour it in my glass, while he replied that we could go to the rooftop bar in a while to get it, as after the end of the breakfast time he would be there personally to provide it: once I arrived there under his invitation, he made me pay 4 euros for it!!!!! Guests are not money machines from which you might take advantage of in every useful situation! If I paid for a breakfast and I cannot get a glass of juice from the machine because there is no power in the facility, once I complain for that and you invite me to go to the rooftop upstairs in a while, I expect to get it for free because it was your suggestion after I complained, hence I am coming under your invitation!
Fourthly, before arriving I had to struggle to call them because they were not replying to my mails in which I was asking for a private transfer from the airport to the hotel since we would arrive in the night time, and after I obtained that after running after them by calls, they asked me 36 euros for 6 kilometers; not even in expansive cities like Milano they have such high rates for taxis! Tourists are considered people to be spilled out of their money on every corner in this place.
All of this is completed by the fact that inside the rooms they do not leave not even one bottle of water to welcome the guests, which is very indecent especially after according to my Booking.com reservation I would have gotten a minibar service for the kind of room I have selected.
Going to the positive points, the hotel is super quiet and it has a small private beach and a pool as well, which is very useful and enjoyable; plus, just 200 meters way there is a bus stop from where you can go both to Corfu town or to the airport (for this you need to go to the Lidl stop and then walk 1,2 km).
I highly reccomend the management of this venue to review their policy on how treating the guests that bring money and richness to the island and to renew the old rooms and make them equal to the new ones, so that all the people can find a decent accomodation on their arrival.
Best regards,
Martina Zoccali