Carisa Maleme

Review based on 4 days stay for a couple in Sept 2023. The hotel is very quiet, with modern furniture, three superb swimming pools, nice pool bar with great cocktails. The most important thing is the staff who are polite, very friendly and helpful.

I visit Crete every year to spend time with my Grandparents who live there, I have stayed in many places around Chania and would absolutely recommend the area to all. This was our first time staying at the Carisa Maleme as a group of 3 women in our 30s. Firstly, there are a lot of positives about the hotel: - our room was lovely, really good sized and with 2 bathrooms - which made getting ready as 3 women much easier! our room also opened out on to a small, quiet pool which was great - the location is great, it is situated in close proximity to Maleme and Gerani and a couple of minutes walk to a small, shingle beach - there is a local bus which stops directly outside the hotel and takes you into the bigger resorts of Platanias and Chania, the bus runs like clockwork and is easy to use - all of the staff were lovely, they were pleasant and helped where they could - breakfast was good, well stocked, lots of choice and fresh - slightly different options each day too which was nice. We also had snacks on a couple of days when they were available and they were nice, although there is only a very small menu (pizza, couple of sandwiches and a greek salad) However, there were a number of issues we felt let the hotel down, it was really apparent that the hotel was newly opened and it felt that a lot of the practicalities and processes at the hotel had not been fully thought through: - we arrived on a night flight which had also been delayed, when we arrived, check in was quick but we were not offered any refreshments, no water at all and the fridge to buy water was locked for the night. The night porter did unlock everything for us but as the only member of staff working it meant that check in for others was delayed. It is pretty standard to offer guests at least water after a night flight, especially as we did not arrive until 3am. (we booked bed and breakfast so was not all inclusive and I wouldnt have expected anything more than a glass or small bottle of water each) but to have nothing when no other shops are open was really frustrating. - The pool bar has very limited opening hours, the drinks fridge was locked at breakfast time and the opening hours stated snack time 12.30 - 3.30pm and happy hour 4-5pm, after that, the bar closed. We are not ones for staying around the hotel all day and night but it was frustrating that we could not get a drink or snack outside of these hours, we couldnt get a drink before our evening out or when we arrived back. There were numerous times when we were waiting for a bus or taxi for our evening when a nice drink around the pool would have been lovely but it just wasnt possible - aside from anything else, the hotel must be missing out on a lot of money by forcing guests to go elsewhere! - Different staff clearly had very individual roles, if that member of staff was not around, service was very difficult - the lady on reception was great but was not around all the time and if she was out, no one else was able to hel