Porto Koukla Beach

Very nice family hotel with friendly staff. We spent 10 nights at the hotel with halfboard. A lot of choice on the breakfast and good variety on the dinner buffet with great food. The beach bar that is next to the sea with good swimming water serves nice lunches and twice per week they have greek night with Pavlos and friends. Very friendly staff made this a memorable stay. A rental car is highly recommended for driving around on the island.

Koukla Beach Hotel in Zakynthos is a complete disaster and a huge disappointment. During our 7-day stay, nobody came even once to clean the room or the bathroom. On Sundays they don’t provide towels, and the ones they do give are old, dirty, and worn out. The bathroom had a rusty bathtub, everything looked neglected and unprofessional. On the very first day, the wardrobe door fell off. I didn’t even bother to complain because I quickly realized how careless and unprofessional the place is. Breakfast? Absolutely terrible. We booked with breakfast included, but after the first day we never went back – it was that bad. You can’t even get a decent coffee, the coffee was disgusting. We tried through Rise Bureau to change the hotel, but they completely ignored us. In my opinion, this is all just a scam to take people’s money. Do not ruin your holiday by coming here. By far the worst “hotel” experience I’ve ever had.

First of all the hotel should remove the word Beach from its name as there is no beach. You go down the stairs and straight into the sea. We stayed for one week in August as a family in room 301. It was a great double room, comfortable beds, and amazing view. However you cannot sit on the baclony if the aircon is on, as the fans are placed on the balcony and produce massive amount of hot air. The bathroom is also not great, if you come back after 8pm you are lucky to get hot water. The towels are changed every four days which is not acceptable. If you have food at the hotel be ready for ok breakfast with not much choice, no fruit at all, there were some oranges on the side which have seen better days in 1980 when the hotel was built. The dinnders are ok. it is very isolated place, there are no any restaurants nearby, you will need a car if you want to go out in the evening. The feeling form the hotel is that no one cares about the customers. Most of the receptionists sit there on their mobile phones all day or they are not there at all. The whole management of the hotel seems like the people who run it don't care and would rather do something completely differnt, I would say if you don't like running hotel, do something else.

We arrived mid Saturday afternoon and were allocated a room on the third floor with no offer of help to take our cases up the stairs. We crossed the road to the pool area where we enjoyed a Chicken Wrap and Coffee, this we were to discover was the highlight of our short stay. The room we were allocated wasn't dirty but wasn't clean either. The shower curtain was just a piece of material hanging from a rail, both had seen better days, there was nowhere to hang the actual shower head from and my partner and myself had to take it in turns to hold it over each others head. The bedding was clean but was grey, whereas the mattress although comfortable must have been in place since the hotel was built. One of the chairs on the balcony had a broken seat. On the Sunday morning, we discovered that the cooked breakfast was cold, not one of the items was even warm! After going on a short walk and seeing two other hotels in the area we decided whatever the cost we would check out of the Porto Koukla Beach and spend the rest of our holiday at one of them. We explained to the girl on reception that we intended to check out and explained why, after settling up all we got from her was "Goodbye" not even trying to make amends.

Nice hotel, shame about the food. Cooked breakfast is stone cold, all week. Evening dinner is only warm, and some meals are not properly cooked. If you like the sound of local dogs barking, this is the place, every afternoon and evening. If you haven't got transport, then your stuck with it.