Top 10: the best Crete beach hotels
An expert guide to the best beach hotels in Crete, featuring the top places to stay for sea views, private beaches, sumptuous spas, excellent restaurants, laidback vibes, design-led interiors and striking artworks in locations including Chania, Rethymnon, Kolymvari, Elounda, Georgioupolis and Agios Nikolaos.
• The best luxury Crete hotels
Ammos Hotel
Chania, Crete, Greece
9Telegraph expert rating
The Ammos ticks all the boxes as a style-conscious seaside hotel that offers cool but unstuffy design, a sandy beach, heated pool, babysitters on tap and delightful home-cooked Cretan food. A few rooms look onto lovely landscaped gardens and the majority have soothing sea views. The restaurant overlooks the huge sandy bay, as do most of the rooms. The beach gets busy, but guests have their own strip with sun loungers strategically positioned for sunset. There are playful touches everywhere – a giant cactus behind the reception desk, sunshine yellow bathrooms, clashing cushions with naughty prints. It’s like a super-stylish playground for grown-ups, designed to appeal to kids too. Read expert review From £104per night
• The best hotels in Crete
Ikaros Beach Resort & Spa
Crete, Greece
8Telegraph expert rating
There’s a home-from-home feel to this friendly resort. Style is elegantly solid, with sizeable, stone-walled villas surrounded by carefully tended gardens, restaurants with stunning sea views and a smart, glass-walled spa. Classic rooms on two floors in the older part of the building come with large balconies. Spacious classic and deluxe bungalows have bathrooms that are almost as big as the bedrooms, plus a terrace and a strip of lawn with sun loungers to soak up sea or sunset views. Some suites and bungalows share medium-sized pools and larger suites for five people have small plunge pools, but the luxury seafront suites are worth splurging for. Breakfast in Ayeri restaurant, which has panoramic sea views, is impeccable. Read expert review From £137per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
• The best beach hotels in Greece
White Palace Grecotel Luxury Resort
Rethymnon, Crete, Greece
8Telegraph expert rating
This comfortable beachside resort with all-white décor and impeccable service has a long strip of sandy beach, several good restaurants, and plenty of kids’ entertainment. Honeymooners love the privacy of the spacious beachfront Yali suites, and couples often come here to marry or renew their vows. Scattered over five buildings, the resort is linked by paths leading through carefully tended gardens. Striking design touches include the glass-walled reception, which has panoramic views over the resort's large central pool towards the sea. A large seawater pool is the focal point of this resort. Four medium sized pools are shared by the rooms grouped around them and there is a dedicated kids’ pool. Read expert review From £242per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
• The best Greek island hotels
Aldemar Royal Mare Thalasso Resort
Crete, Greece
7Telegraph expert rating
Aldemar Royal Mare is situated on a sandy beach along a rocky peninsula, three miles from Hersonissos. It’s an excellent all-inclusive five-star resort which offers something for everyone, from several pools to the superb Thalasso spa and abundance of restaurants. The main Symposio restaurant offers guests plenty of outside seating with sea and pool views. El Greco, a traditional, tavern-style Greek restaurant and Albatross also overlooks the beach. Rooms are spacious and modern. The best for privacy are the pool-sharing bungalows, which are like tiny, self contained villages built around nicely landscaped pools. Honeymooners should pick one of the two junior seafront suites, or the Presidential suite, of which both have private pools. Read expert review From £123per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
• The best family-friendly hotels in Greece
Avra Imperial Hotel
Kolymvari, Crete, Greece
8Telegraph expert rating
The resort is close to a strip of shingle beach in the town of Kolymvari, with its small strand of shops, restaurants and the monastery museum of Gonia. The reception, styled on a Minoan palace, is vast, with immensely high ceilings, colonnaded walkways and Minoan inscriptions on floors and walls. The main focus of the resort is a large glass-walled pool, flanked by rooms on three floors and several restaurants fringed with small lawns, water features and banks of carefully tended plants. The glass-sided pool is huge and there are plenty of sunbeds and daybeds surrounding it. There is a shingle beach (Blue Flag) at the bottom of the resort as well as several tennis courts and a small supermarket. The elegant spa has a hammam, sauna and indoor heated pool. Read expert review From £201per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
• The best family-friendly hotels in Greece
Minos Beach Art Hotel
Crete, Greece
8Telegraph expert rating
Minos Beach Art Hotel overlooks an enchanting bay, close to the lively town of Agios Nikolaos. The vibe is rather self-consciously 'laidback boho': there are bean bags scattered on stone jetties along the seafront, sculptures and artworks dotted around. Walt Disney stayed here in 1963 whilst filming Moonspinners and since then the resort has been a haven for art-loving celebrities. A long stone-paved walkway punctuated by jetties loops along the extensive seafront and gives views over the bay. Two small sandy beaches lapped by warm shallow water are ideal for tots. Ladders descend from the stone walkway into sparkling waters and on-site there is a large pool with plenty of sunbeds and a spa. Read expert review From £205per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
• The best luxury hotels in Crete
Domes Noruz
Chania, Crete, Greece
9Telegraph expert rating
This stylish design hotel modelled on the domes of nearby Chania’s Venetian shipyard, has two large pools, a bijou spa and its own strip of sandy beach. It’s a 10-minute drive from the city’s cafés, nightlife and museums, as well as being close to some of Crete’s best beaches, including the pink sand beach of Elafonisi. Public areas are immaculate, with scatter cushions and bean bags strewn over carefully tended strips of grass near two large pools, one of which has a swim-up bar and stunning sea views. The resort's spa has a plunge pool, steam room and sauna facilities, and delivers a range of treatments using Elemis products. There is also a well-equipped gym, and safe boxes near the beach where guest can leave valuables when they swim. Read expert review From £100per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
Anemos Luxury Grand Resort
Georgioupolis, Crete, Greece
8Telegraph expert rating
An elegant five-star resort opposite an extensive sandy beach, close to Kournas, Crete’s only lake. The focal point of the resort is a large outdoor freshwater pool surrounded by lagoons, and peppered with different relaxation areas equipped with daybeds and sun loungers. The rooms have gleaming white and khaki fixtures and fittings, with pops of colour in cushions and covers, and rococo features such as chandeliers and curvy chair legs. Suites offer a choice of pool or sea views and some suites and bungalows also have shared or private pools. At the Ostria restaurant, Mediterranean seafood restaurant chef Nikos serves creative Cretan cuisine using locally grown ingredients to produce a range of interesting dishes with a theatrical twist: think appetisers dangling from miniature olive trees. Read expert review From £100per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
• The best beach hotels in Greece
Daios Cove Luxury Resort & Villas
Agios Nikolaos, Crete, Greece
8Telegraph expert rating
Close to the region’s winding coast road, Daios Cove resort sits in a natural amphitheatre that descends in stages to a private sandy beach. The resort is close to the bustling town of Agios Nikolaos and Spinalonga, the last 20th-century leper colony in Europe which features in Victoria Hislop’s best-selling novel, The Island. Every one of the resort’s 230 rooms, 30 suites and 40 villas have wall-to-ceiling windows with views over the dazzling, clear waters of Vathi Bay. Larger suites have private sea-view terraces and plunge pools. Facilities include two tennis courts, several outdoor pools and a comprehensive spa, with a Finnish sauna, indoor pool, hydro-massage facilities and treatments. Read expert review From £302per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
• The best Greek island hotels
Elounda Mare Hotel
Elounda, Crete, Greece
8Telegraph expert rating
Set on a secluded stretch of indented coast, this five-star resort on the Greek Island of Crete offers rustic, homely villas, bungalows and suites with stylish furnishings, fireplaces and private pools. Service is personable and willing, and amenities comprise a nine-hole golf course, spa and watersports including scuba. There’s a small sandy beach and guests can be found lounging under brollies on the stone-built lidos or using the large salt-water pool. There are three restaurants, ranging from formal evening to beachside. The style is rustic, with wood-and-stone accents in the foyer. It was the first Greek member of the prestigious Relais en Châteaux chain and is sister to nearby resort, Porto Elounda seven minutes’ walk away. Read expert review From £235per night Check availability Rates provided by Booking.com
