Zeus Dolce Athens

Absolutely shocking. This is not a 5 star hotel/resort. We booked this place because the photos looked amazing! It is very far from amazing! We left the hotel after less than 24 hours of being here! The first room with a pool we booked was in terrible condition, dirty, smelt of damp, damages inside and out. We was moved to another room, this also stunk of damp! We complained and was shown a 3rd room! But I was no better! We spent 1 night and the next morning left demanding a refund. They charged us for 1 day out of the 7 but at this point I was just happy to get my family out of this hell hole. This place has not been maintained at all since they obviously did works and took the photos you see online when you book. We was all inclusive, they charged us for bottled water?!, the food was very poor! Not a good selection and certainly nothing traditionally Greek. This hotel needs serious attention! I see staff members laughing at guest once they left the front desk after also lodging complaints. This place is an absolute **** hole. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY AND RUIN YOUR VACATION BY BOOKING THIS HOTEL! We moved around the coast to GRAND RESORT LAGONISSI. This is a truly 5 star resort and I wish we found this the first time around!.

Very disappointing stay. Bufffet was very expensive and lunch service was slow. Upgraded to a bungalow that had a musty odor. One of the bars closes on Monday’s (in a hotel????). It’s a lovely looking place, but my experience has been disappointing. Lots of ants on the patio during dinner was unexpected.

Beautiful hotel, location is great. Hotel staff is friendly and helpful. Great restaurants. Highly recommended

Rooms were decent and value for money. The spa facility was the highlight with Marios and Aji giving excellent service. Highly recommend if you need to unwind and detox from your crazy schedule or holiday madness.

It's hard to know where to begin! We are very easy going people but due to the amount of issues we experienced I could not recommend the Zeus Dolce to anyone, at least certainly not in April and not as a 5 star hotel, at that time of year it was operating at a 2 or 3 star level. The hotel also runs as a conference centre which is located in the middle of the main building, so sometimes there are a lot of business people having breaks in the main corridor and also eating in the buffet restaurant. I planned a luxury get away with my daughter, who was pregnant, as a last treat before she had her baby. Luxury was not what we got! We were 'sold' by the glossy images on the website which were mostly not the reality. Before we arrived we were upgraded to a villa as there was an 'issue' with the room we'd booked - so we were excited and had high expectation! The location is lovely and close to Athens. However, the 'beach' at the resort was in an atrocious condition - literally like a bomb site, holes, rubble, debris and broken steps, no sunbeds or parasols. We had been looking forward to swimming in the sea but went elsewhere as the beach was not inviting. At the start of our holiday the main pool was roped off and no cushions on the sun loungers. We didn't know if it was safe to use; when we asked we were told it was roped off because the weather was 'cold', which is the most ridiculous reason. Coming from the UK we did not find it that cold!! Pool Safety: There are no signs to indicate how deep the swimming pool is – it varies a lot, the main area is not standing depth. There were no hand rails by the steps and the edges of the steps were not marked – meaning it was easy to miss your step or swim into them. There were many issues with the villa; we had the feeling it had not been occupied since the last season and felt we were trouble-shooting issues which should have been checked and dealt with before our arrival. We were plagued over several days with various bugs; ants, flying ants; flying insects; jumping spiders and wood lice. Not just one or two insects but hundreds and hundreds of them! We must have killed hundreds of them ourselves. I took videos of the ants crawling all round the doors and walls! We asked to keep bug spray in our room so we could also deal with these problems ourselves. Then one night there was another invasion of ants and when I rang reception I was told 'you already have bug spray' but I said we had used it all previously; when none was brought to our room I went to reception at midnight (in my dressing gown and slippers!) to see what was happening but after a long wait no one could find any more spray; someone did come and sweep them out for us. We initially had issues getting the air conditioning and tv to work. We had to ask for the private pool to be cleaned as there was dirt in the bottom. We needed to ask for about 5 lightbulbs to be replaced as lights weren't working. We had to ask for the outdoor furniture and parasol to be cleaned and moved to the terrace of our villa from an adjacent area; there were ants all over the furniture cushions and there was an insect nest in the parasol. These maintenance things were sorted out eventually and housekeeping staff were lovely, but we felt we shouldn't have needed to point all these things out; it gave us unnecessary stress because we needed to keep 'complaining' about things for days when we should have been relaxing. We love our food and had expected to be 'fine dining' which we definitely didn't. Only the main buffet restaurant was open during our stay, it lacked atmosphere and design and felt more like a holiday camp canteen. We had packed smart dresses for the evening but they never got worn as dress code was very casual. We were never greeted by anyone when we came into the main restaurant; it was as if no one cared whether we were there. Having a restaurant manager who didn't smell of body odour would be more pleasant! Generally the food quality was poor and the range was very limited; this did improve slightly during our stay as more guest arrived. The 'hot' food was not hot; and there were no warm plates; by the time we took food to a table to eat it was virtually cold. It made us question food safety, wondering how long it had been on display at low temperatures. Many dishes were not clearly labelled, especially on the cold/salad section; this does not help when people have restricted diets or allergies. On the first morning my daughter selected a '4 minute' boiled egg and it was virtually raw, - the egg white was still clear. When we complained about quality of food it was agreed we could eat A La Carte at no cost, however it turned out the A La Carte restaurant was not operational - it was a basic room, not laid up for dining, just tables and chairs, no lights at all and sometimes the entrance was roped off. Needless to say we didn't use it; even less atmosphere than the main canteen! When we asked about the A La Carte menu we were told it was a verbal menu with only 4 main options (pasta, fish, chicken, steak), no starters or desserts and the food was to be eaten in the main restaurant. We both opted for chicken and were told there was only one portion. The chicken was just basic with chips, no vegetables, sauces etc. The next day the options were exactly the same, at that point we gave up! We aimed to eat out once a day so that we had some quality food! There are some nice restaurants in the neighbouring village on the sea-front. The Room Service Food Menu (we were optimistic!) was not available, we were told it 'hadn't started yet'. There was no consistency in housekeeping, we asked for bath robes and eventually ended up with 5. One day we only had two bath towels and another day we had six! We asked for the shower soap dispenser to be replenished and ended up with about 3 bottles but still none in the shower! The Spa is vastly over-priced for the quality of treatment we received and I regret spending money on it - I'd hoped it would add a little luxury to our stay, but it didn't! The gym equipment was adequate but there were no towels available and we had to go and find paper cups from the Spa in order to use the water machine. If we had been aware of the minimal level of service that was being offering in April we would have booked a different hotel. It was so disappointingly bad at the beginning that I started researching other hotels in the area and considered asking for a refund so I could book somewhere else, but sadly there wasn't much availability in the area. Things gradually improved once Dina and Anna (Guest Relations) were on site; we did talk to them at length about our issues but there was no follow up to check how we were. After a week, as we were checking out we were asked if everything had been ok. We were so shocked as it had been anything but ok. When we said that, we were asked if we wanted to see the manager - but the thought of reliving all we'd experienced was just too much! Sadly it was an expensive holiday which lacked the luxury we thought we were paying for. And our last Mum and Daughter holiday was somewhat disappointing; just as well we had a sense of humour and tried to make the best out of a very bad job! Just don't go there in April!