Aristide Hotel - Small Luxury Hotels of the World

There will never be enough words to celebrate this hotel! My husband Ben and I stayed at Aristide in September 24, to celebrate our wedding. We booked out the entire hotel for our family and friends, and they made us feel so special. Oana, Yiannis, Petros and all the waiting on and hotel staff are attentive, enthusiastic and genuinely humble about such a gorgeous hotel and venue. The food is delicious, the rooms are cool, grand and artistic. The BBQ picnic experience is a day and meal we will never forget. We can’t wait to come back and visit as often as life allows. Please stay here, you will not be disappointed. Chloe & Ben x

You can read endless reviews of this hotel gushing about the design and decor, but just know what you are getting for your money before you decide to stay here. You need to really, really care about the name brand of the light fixtures (Tom Dixon!), and the art on the walls. If those are the biggest determining factor in which hotels you pick—if you are that kind of traveler, then you'll just melt at this place. But if you are a more typical traveler, there is very little that you will find "luxurious" about this place, much less any kind of value for money. The guest suites do have opulent decor to be sure but they are laid out very strangely: the beds are in the back room, right by the door, and the adjoining room is given over to an enormous bathroom with a dead palm tree and/or plastic bust blocking access to the little balcony, while the toilet is just in the middle of the room, so if you are sitting on the bed you can watch your companion use the toilet...? Normally you would have a bathroom by the door and the space with the nice view and balcony for the bedroom? Very trendy but not thoughtful design. The hotel's sole "amenities" —the garden and the rooftop restaurant that everyone mentions—can be visited without having to stay here; just be sure to keep out of the way of the staff, who spend the day hanging out drinking coffee in the little bar, which doesn't lend to an atmosphere of great customer service. To be a guest here is to adhere to a lot of rules, and if you ask for something you get a lecture in why they do things that way... which is the opposite of "top-notch service." For instance, there is no TV because That's How We Want You To Relax, and there are no telephones so you have to WhatsApp the hotel if you want anything (you are not supposed to want anything, you are suppose to take what they give you and absolutely love it). Also evening "turndown service" consists of the staff coming in and shutting off the a/c so you come back from dinner to a stuffy room and have to wait for it to cool off again. Because they're ecological, is the lecture you're given when you ask how this makes for a good guest experience. Also note that there are only private plunge pools in certain rooms, you will see on some websites that an outdoor pool is listed but this is incorrect. The owners obviously have amazing PR as there has been an article in every single travel magazine since this place opened, and have translated that into room rates 30-50% over what the other nice hotels nearby charge. But I recommend that you see through the hype: this was definitely the biggest disappointment of our 2 week trip in Greece.