Akti Imperial Deluxe Spa Resort by Wyndham

Last minute holiday

This was our first time at Akti and we were pleasantly supprised. Hotel is very modern and clean. All staff are helpful and very friendly. Grounds are well maintained. The room was big enough to accommodate a two people and very clean. Air conditioning, refrigerator and TV were functioning perfectly. There is also a safe in the room. Comfy bed, always hot water and great to have a bottled wine in a fridge. Food was really good. The use of plastic gloves in the buffet is a really good idea, allows you to still help yourself. Beach towels are available from the Spa. Avoid the wooden beds as they are extremely uncomfortable.

Disappointed visit

Decided to return to this hotel after coming here in October 2020. We booked for 2 weeks, after the first week I would have been happy to go home. The hotel it self is still lovely, just a shame about the food selection and trying to get a drink in the evenings. Last year every night in the main buffet they had a roasting station, beef, pork, turkey and fish etc. This year it was burgers, tiny chicken fillets or kofte. I did ask and was told it was because the hotel was full, strangely the hotel was full last year too. I believe it was down to the massive convention that was on whilst we were there. Also the nationalities too, they don't generally have the same standards. They had gloves out to use in the buffet, but they didn't seem to understand how to use them. Using hands to grab food at anytime is wrong, more so at the moment with covid around. We sat waiting 30 minutes for a drink in the bar area after being told not to queue. I know last year we could, I understand you want to offer the service but you need to have the staff to manage it.

The first time we have ever checked out of a hotel early..

The consensus from the majority of reviews seem to say the same thing and people do seem to like this hotel but there are a lot of issues that don't seem to have been mentioned in reviews that I think travellers should be aware of before booking this hotel. We paid extra for a sea view room on the 6th floor and admit the sea view from the balcony was great however this ended up being pretty much the only thing we liked about the hotel. The rooms were very small and the wardrobe had some weird shelf layout where half the space was blocked off by the wall.. The biggest issue we had was that there are just too many guests to what facilities this hotel provide. I did read in previous reviews that people put towels on beds at 7am but thought this wouldn't be the case (surely this is an outdated practice that the hotel pool staff would rule out?) - nope it was all true, by 7-8am all the sun beds had towels on them and lots of towels left there for long periods of time without anyone being on them. Do you really want to be 'one of those guys'?.. Again there simply aren't enough beds to accommodate the number of guests in the hotel. Down to breakfast and if you wanted cooked food there was a choice of undercooked beans, tinned mushrooms, powdered scrambled egg and greasy bacon. The fruit choice was fine but this is not 5 star food.. There was a breakfast bar just outside the main restaurant which had a small selection of cooked items, plus croissants/pastries etc which was where we preferred to eat as it was a bit more chilled. And so after breakfast you then head out to the overcrowded pool areas and yes there are a couple of beds that left are in the shaded areas all day. Come lunch time there are a couple of food bars which again have no seats left so you have to stand there with a plate of food because this hotel wont allow you to take plates to a different area, your sun bed etc. You can take crappy paper cups (which disintegrate after about 10 minutes) with drinks to your bed so why not have paper plates for people to take food to their sun bed?!? And so the bizarre set up/rules continue and you head to the beach where you are greeted with a sheet of rules telling you alcohol is forbidden on the beach and the door to the beach is closed promptly at 6pm etc don't do this don't do that ...The useless beach bar is a baffling/giant wooden structure that was empty every day. This served bottled water and possibly the same mediocre cheese rolls you could get back at the hotel. We could usually get a table for dinner in the restaurant because this was open from 7 until i think way after midnight. The food was meh, i think we had one meal we all agreed was ok during the holiday but it was mainly just forgettable 2/3 star fayre. You cannot under any circumstances (another rule) take food out of the main restaurant – there are signs all over saying they will charge €15 for the privilege (?) And then you would like to sit in the bar after dinner however the theme continues where the soulless bright white bar area is completely full and the only sofas you can find are the ones next to the toilets. Go down to the pool stage and there was usually some mediocre stage act we tried to figure out but gave up with. Cocktails were mediocre, and the table service rule was bizarre and didn't work – took ages to get a drink basically. In the end after dinner we would usually head out to one of the local bars (great Greek bar/restaurant 2 minutes down the road). When we booked, the write up seemed to suggest there were numerous restaurants – this isn’t so. There are some ‘al a carte’ restaurants but these were all booked up for our stay and tbh didn’t look great. We also were under the impression there was a crepe bar…the crepe bar is just some pre-done crepes they put out after 10pm in the main restaurant with all the other leftovers from dinner. We booked to stay for 7 nights and in the end we left on the morning of the 6th day because we decided we wanted to at least enjoy the last 36 hours of our holiday. When we checked out early reception were not overly interested in the fact we were going early. We moved to a small hotel in Ialysos and the resort there is great for a couple of days. We have had a fair few holidays in Rhodes at 5 star all inclusive hotels (Mitsis etc) and always enjoyed them so when we booked this one we had no reason to believe it would be any different. This was not a 5 star hotel, the hotel is overcrowded and has too few facilities to cater for the amount of guests - (it wasn't fully booked and wasn't peak season).