Your choice of a Greek Hotel is conditioned by:
Consider your personality, budget and the kind of experience you want to have while visiting Greece. You can even mix and match: stay at hotel in Athens for a few nights and then rent a villa in Mykonos. Greeks are warm, welcoming hosts. For Greeks Philoxenia (litteraly a «friend to a stranger») translated by hospitality it is much deeper than that. It is an unspoken cultural law that shows generosity and courtesy to strangers.
The traditional choice when visiting any new place is a hotel. Greece has tens of thousands of choices all over the country, which come in all shapes and sizes from a small familly run hotel to a ultra-luxury hotel.
Most of Greece’s hotels are small, family-owned enterprises, but there are also outposts of international hotel groups like Marriot, Hilton and Starwood, Sofitel. If you have accumulated reward points with one of these hotel chains, you might want to use them for your Greek vacation, but be sure to book far ahead.
Hotels in Greece
The Greek National Tourism Organisation and the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels determines the star ratings of hotels according to the following guidelines:
- Four- or five-star hotels must have personnel that speak at least two languages. They must provide breakfast areas and restaurants inhouse, have elevators and offer easy access to disabled persons
- Room service is required at hotels of three stars or more. Housekeeping is guaranteed once a day as well as an afternoon check on the room.
- All three-, four- and five-star hotel rooms have telephone with direct external lines. Two-star hotels must have phones in the rooms.
- Linens are changed daily in four- and five-star hotels. Three-star hotels change their linens three times a week; two-stars, twice a week. One-star properties change linens at least once a week.
- Bar service is available eight hours a day at two-star hotels, 12 hours at three-stars and 16 hours at four-and five-star hotels.
- Nearly all hotels in Greece offer breakfast as part of the nightly room rate. Generally this includes a selection of pastries, bread, cheese, meats, yogurt and fruit. Most hotels in Greece now offer Wi-Fi, often included in the room rate.
