This review covers a 3 night stay in July 2023 by a family of 2 adults and 2 kids. ONE BEDROOM SUITE: we booked the entry level Superior Inland view room but as an LHW member was upgraded to a suite upon arrival, which was much appreciated. I suspect our suite was a bit older than those shown online, perhaps not yet refurbed, but I can’t say for sure. It was essentially two adjoining regular rooms, where one had been converted to a living room. While it was an adequately nice room with an especially spacious lounge area, the bedroom itself was a bit small, and the bathroom was tiny and claustrophobic with a single sink and combo bathtub/shower. We had a nice view of the main pool and beach from our two balconies. POOLS: the resort offers a main pool, adults only pool, indoor pool and a kids pool with slides. The main pool seemed pretty old school, being just a rectangular block with no ledges or shallow sections, ranging in depth from 1.2m all the way up to 2.8m! It was still full of kids though. To get a lounger at the main pool or adults pool you had to reserve one by 8am or earlier, which did seem a bit extreme. The kids pool only opened at 10am and did get full up as well, but we always managed to find loungers here when we visited in the afternoons. The kids pool has a 30cm section with one small slide, plus a separated 100cm section with 2 high-speed water slides that my 6 year old really enjoyed (these had a 1.4m minimum height requirement). I liked the general area surrounding the pools, it was very green and tropical with many of the loungers situated here offering elevated ocean views. BEACH: the hotel offers two beaches, one of which is designated for families. This included a selection of buckets, spades, etc. available for all guests, some other beach toys, as well a floating inflated obstacle course in the ocean, which was available to 6+ year old kids (my 6 year old loved this, but it had appeal for older kids and even adults). It’s a sheltered enclave of a beach with clear sand (no pebbles) and very gentle waves. We started all our days here and had to go down and reserve loungers by 8:30am or so. Having a separate family beach with equipment provided was something we haven’t experienced before and was one of the more enjoyable aspects of our stay. KIDS CLUB/ENTERTAINMENT: the kids club is a somewhat small space fully indoors which can accommodate up to 30 kids at a time (our kids always got in straight away, but it did get full occasionally). It had a soft play area, a Nintendo Wii, and a few other things on offer. Kids over the age of 4 could be dropped off, and the staff seemed great and very engaging. Note the kids club closes for an hour at lunchtime. Apart from the kids club, there was a kids show on certain days at 5pm (we managed to see this on all 3 of our days) and I was impressed by the quality of these. The format differed from day to day (science show, dance party, juggling show, etc.). Another thing worth noting was the kids club, kids pool, outdoor playground and family beach were all located within a one minute walk of each other, which made life very easy when going back and forth between the different areas. BREAKFAST: this was a good spread, with some creative menu offerings and the food was quite enjoyable. Prosecco and cocktails were on offer as well. It was well organised with more than enough seating available, swift delivery of coffee and minimal queues to order eggs, etc. OTHER FOOD: we had all our lunches at the hotel, plus one dinner. Beachside lunch orders were decent, but it was notable there was no kids menu on offer. The resort offers a free kids buffet for lunch and dinner, but seemingly no kids options if you wanted to stay pool or beachside, even if you were willing to pay up. The kids buffet had a pretty sad selection on offer on the one day we did visit. We had our one dinner at Limanaki, their oceanfront seafood restaurant, and this was an excellent meal in a beautiful setting. SERVICE: many staff were truly excellent and went over and above to make our stay more enjoyable. The staff to guest ratio seemed high. Impressively, there were often servers loitering around each of the pool and beach sections just waiting to take orders. On our final 1.5 days things got a bit slower as the hotel became busier, albeit things were still relatively efficient. One thing I didn’t like was the inflexibility of the menu. Typically very young servers with ‘trainee’ badges took beachside orders through an iPhone-type device, and they would flat out refuse to accommodate any items not listed on their devices. For example, my wife wanted a fresh lemonade and this was refused more than once beachside, yet when I went up to the very same bar the orders were delivered from, the request was accommodated without hesitation. A request from my 3-year old for an omelette was met by bewilderment by our server prior to his flat out refusal. I didn’t feel this was such an unreasonable request. THE NEGATIVES: although many aspects of our stay were great, there were a few parts of the experience that felt a bit budget, and certainly not up to par for a supposedly luxury hotel that is LHW affiliated: i) having to collect towels from a single kiosk in the main building and then set up your own sun loungers; ii) densely packed sun loungers meaning you were often within touching distance of your neighbour; iii) having only two lifts to service the entire property, of which one was out of order for the first 1.5 days (many people resorted to using the stairs); iv) the aforementioned refusal to be flexible with menus; v) our tiny bathroom; and vi) poor soundproofing in rooms. While much of the resort has very recently been refurbed to a high spec, it is undeniably an old property and its age does show itself in a few different ways. CONCLUSION: while there were a few notable negatives, we did enjoy our stay on the whole. The hotel really excelled with its kids facilities and entertainment, our 6 year old had the time of his life, and our 3 year old had a great time too (although there was a bit less on offer for her age group). The family beach was nice and the lush gardens gave out a nice tropical vibe. The resort was well laid out and easy to navigate, and we had some excellent encounters with the friendly staff. We preceded this stay with a visit to Parklane, a competing hotel nearby, and this was a newer, flashier and more luxurious physical property, but Amathus was the winner in terms of service, kids amenities and breakfast offerings. Both resorts are good options though, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend either one to future travellers.…
This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of Tripadvisor LLC.