I wanted to at least post some details of our 5 night stay at the Domes of Elounda. Sadly since we have returned the hotel has been increased dramatically for award redemptions coming in August. I get that the hotel was a good rewards redemption but the increase to between 85-100k per night is pretty ridiculous!
We arrived via a private car transfer that I had reserved directly with the hotel. The check-in is done in the bar area or on the outside patios next to the lobby area. I thought this was a nice touch and definitely gave a much more luxurious impression than any of the other hotels we have stayed at in Greece. We were offered a nice welcome drink and the check-in was processed fairly quickly. As a Marriott Platinum, I had noticed that we were upgraded to a 2 bedroom Residence from the standard award category suite. Luckily the agent that checked us in confirmed this and before long we were seated on a golf cart on our way to our room.
View from the patio next to the lobby where they checked us in. This is also an area that we sat and had drinks prior to dinner.
From what i could tell, all of the one Bedroom Suites (which are the regular award category rooms) and some of the other rooms are located near the reception building and then leading up the hill. Once you get to the top of the hill, you can see the far side of the resort which has the Residences as well as the Villas and a large pool. The building next to that pool is actually a Concierge area for VIP guest..not sure who gets access to it but our key did not work. The building also is where the Italian restaurant and a small store is. Here's a view of the pool at night that I took when we had dinner at the Italian restaurant.
There are basically three lines of residences and each line has approx. 10 residences in it. Each residence has a private outside gate that when opened leads into a small courtyard where you enter your residence. When you step inside you are in the living room area.
Here are some pics of our 2 bedroom Residence with private pool.
To the right of the living room was the second bedroom with a bath.
To the left of the living room was the master bedroom which had the bed situated to get a view of the back patio and pool. The master had a nice bath with shower and tub.
The residences feature a private swimming pool with a nice patio and two lounge areas. The pools for two residences meet at the very end but the areas are very private due to the high walls.
The following picture shows the way the pools connected at the end. It also shows the amazing villas that site on the hilltop that I do not think belong to the property.
IMHO the Residence was nicely furnished. The master bedroom was a little small due to the layout but I get that they wanted to maximize the view of the patio and pool. All the rooms provided adequate storage. There were a total of 3 tv's in the room. Each room had individual AC units as well as ceiling fans. In the living room there was a kitchenette cabinet that had a 2 top burner as well as a dishwasher and a small refrigerator. Glasses, utensils and even some pots were provided in the area.
Restaurants
There are several restaurants on the property. Let me start off by saying that the free Platinum breakfast could be eaten in ANY of the restaurants serving breakfast. Since the Italian restaurant was closest to our room, we always ate breakfast there. I had assume that they might have a limited setup in the Italian restaurant but overall we were very happy with the buffet. I am unsure if the other breakfast options offered anything better than the Italian restaurant since we did not try any of the other options for breakfast.
Restaurant options for dinner where the Italian Restaurant, an Asian inspired place next to the adult pool at the reception area, a buffet restaurant near the reception area (I assume this was the main restaurant for all the russian tourists staying at the resort on a full or partial meal plan), a beach bar restaurant (only open during the day) and a Greek restaurant on the far end of the beach. Worth noting is that the restaurants are NOT all open every night of the week. We found this strange but I assume it's not worth it for them since people go outside of the resort and some are likely on the meal plan so they eat in the buffet restaurant.
Food quality was allround very good! We ate at the Italian restaurant twice. One of the meals was excellent and then had a not so good meal which the hotel staff and managers made a bigger deal out of than we did. (They virtually tripped over themselves apologizing for the issue that night and then the manager actually called us to discuss the next morning. We said all was ok but he really wanted to talk to us to understand what went wrong and then he insisted on covering our meal for us the following night.) We enjoyed our meal at the Asian place but hands down the best meal was at the Greek Taverna restaurant on the far end of the resort beach.
Staff
Hands down some of the best staff of any resort we have stayed at! They might not always be the most polished in service but they try and are super friendly and accommodating! We found this was true for all the staff in general from the guys working the beach to the guys driving the golf carts. Funny but the golf cart guys actually got out of the driver seats of the carts when they pulled up to load passengers and then got back in to drive the carts. Restaurant staff was also super. Only time I was a bit frustrated was with the phone agents who didn't always seem to understand requests.
Pools and Beach
There were two main pools on property one being at the main reception building (this was the adult pool) and one on the far end of the resort near the Italian restaurant which seemed to be the family pool. The beach area was small but nice. There were plenty of lounge chairs and customers staying in the Residence could use the "private" area on the left side of the beach. One thing we noted is that the beach was always very busy around 11 and then cleared out when most of the people that were on the meal plan left around lunch time. Even if you didn't get a perfect spot when you got there early you could move once things cleared out for lunch. There were kids but not too many. Sadly one day there was a kid that made more noise than a whole school of children normally would and it kept throwing temper tantrums screaming bloody murder. The Russian parents seemed to be able to ignore the screaming but others clearly were bothered by all the noise. When they finally left I am surprised that the crowd didn't clap!
Clientele
On Mykonos we felt like we were surrounded by other Americans...here it was a mixture of numerous nationalities but clearly the majority of the people staying with children were Russian. We had noticed this when we had stayed at the Blue Palace a couple of years ago and clearly Crete is very popular with Russian tourists.
WILL WORK ON ADDING FURTHER DETAILS TO THE THREAD AS TIME PERMITS!