Labranda Blue Bay Resort

We went as a large family group, 25 people in total, and we had the absolute best holiday. The standout was the animation team, they were incroyable, kept us busy all day and entertained all night, and there is no way to thank them enough! so a special shout out to all of them, Noah, Thomas, Arthur, Francesca, Suvi, Annabelle - and any others I didn’t get the chance to meet! The hotel itself was lovely, decent sized rooms and the facilities were great! Fun activities dotted around the resort down to the beach, which is right on the doorstep! Did not want to leave!!

We arrived for a week as a family of five at the very end of July. Before arriving, I was apprehensive due to some of the negative reviews written in the weeks leading up to our holiday. It was a relief to discover that in our opinion, the hotel wasn’t anywhere near as bad as some had made it out to be. However, we did agree with some of the points highlighted by some already, there are improvements that could be made to make guests’ visits more enjoyable.

General hotel and pool areas The views from the hotel are stunning. We loved eating breakfast each morning at the beach front cafe. At night, the beach is a perfect location to watch the sunset.

There is a good choice of pools. We avoided the main activity pool and chose most days to sit at the slightly quieter one, next to the children’s park. This still had a lively vibe to it but without the hustle and bustle of the main pool. To get a sun bed here, we were down for around 7.45am. We also enjoyed the much quieter pools at the annex. Although you lack the sea views here, they are set in gorgeous gardens surrounded by olive trees. Here, a number of sun beds were still available when we arrived at 10am.

There are areas of the hotel that are in definite need of maintenance and TLC; cracked tiles around the pool, uncomfortable and damaged sun beds and poor quality umbrellas all require attention.

Accommodation We had two rooms, one in the annex and another in the main hotel.

The rooms are worn in places and in need of general maintenance and upgrade. However, they did have everything we needed, were comfortable and cleaned thoroughly every day by friendly and helpful housemaids. In the annex, we experienced issues with our shower flooding into the main area of the bathroom which became unsafe due to the risk of slipping. We were required to use towels to stop water running out of the shower area. Fortunately our towels were changed daily.

The annex was very quiet and we rarely heard anyone after midnight. It was accessed by crossing a road. Although the road wasn’t necessarily busy, it was used regularly for coach and taxi pickups throughout the day so we were always very cautious when crossing, especially with our young child.

Food and drink We enjoyed the food in the main restaurant. As a vegetarian, I can struggle to find a variety of choices but didn’t experience this here. We particularly loved the salads, great variety and lots of flavour. Desserts were really good too. The kids enjoyed the snack bar. We didn’t access any of the à la carte restaurants due to lack of availability but that was our fault as we didn’t book soon enough.

Unfortunately, we found the drinks to be very poor quality. The cocktails were inconsistently made depending on who made them and which bar you went to. Soft drinks weren’t great either. We spent a lot of money, either buying the premium drinks or bringing our own in from the local shops. By the end of the week, we noticed numerous other families doing this too. There was no waiter service for evening drinks and queues were long which made trying to relax in the evenings hard. Drinks were limited to three per person.

Location The hotel is reasonably close to Rhodes Town and we had two lovely visits there. We used the public bus on one occasion and the shuttle bus the second time. The public bus is the cheapest option but can get very busy as it’s a direct bus to and from the airport.

Other than a few shops and restaurants, there isn’t really much else around the hotel itself within walking distance. We were aware of this beforehand though and it didn’t bother us. Staff working in the local shops were very friendly and they stocked everything we needed.

Again, we were aware before we arrived that the hotel is on the flight path and this wasn’t of a concern to us during our stay. In fact we quite enjoyed watching the planes fly over!

Overall we did have a very enjoyable holiday. The location of the hotel in terms of views, and the variety of locations to relax and eat, outweighed the negatives. We loved Rhodes and would consider returning to the hotel if the areas of concern highlighted on mine and the reviews of others in terms of general maintenance were addressed.

The hotel was nice. Food was decent, every evening different cuisine. Also was option to go to à la carte