Institute of Mediterranean Studies

Stayed as a family of 4 for 9 days in mid August 2025, 2 adults and 2 children. Positives: Remote hill top location in Old Town Malia (10/10). Villas with private 10m to 15m length pools (10/10). Overall the teams were very helpful and did their best to support. Amazing views of Malia from your balcony from the hill top location (10/10). Notable mentions; Alexia at the front desk, New lady in the restaurant from Romania, Male supervisor / manager who helped us after we got locked out of the villa with 2 keys at night. Private pool chemical level being checked. Met the new owner at dinner whilst the teams were stressfully trying to work out our bill for a new menu and he said he his aware of what they need to improve on and service is not were he wants it to be. Negatives: Attention to detail I.e. 1 bed was missing its top cover for the first 3 nights. Very easy to lock yourself out of the villa because of the safety feature on the doors. Service in the restaurant needs to be improved / missed opportunity from the hotel due to isolated location. Catering options are very limited / Menu cards are confusing / Not clear what you have ordered and what you are paying for. Nightly disturbances from staffing quarters into the early morning (stayed in villa 407). No locks on the bathroom or toilet doors. Hot water in the tap & shower is extremely boiling hot. Toilet / Shower room on the lower floor in the 2 bedroom villas should have a solid divider as water gets everywhere.

Loved the pool. The villa was really clean and bright. You do need to check into the actual hotel (which this is not, this is the villas), which is like 5-10 mins away by car, and I'll say this now that the hotel does have a restaurant. It was nice that when requested, they quickly delivered an iron and ironing board since it wasn't already inside our villa. The whole property was really clean and well maintained. The view from our villa was nice. The villa does have a steam shower which was nice. It had two bathrooms, one with the bedroom and one downstairs. It had its own dedicated parking spot for our rental car, dishware for cooking, a washer (no dryer), microwave, and a nice refrigerator/freezer. Couple of minor gripes and preferences were that the furniture was really basic and hard plastic so the seating was not comfortable. The wifi was pretty fast (broadband) but extremely high latency (ping) (700+ ms) for those who care about things like that. One of the gripes we had was that there is allegedly "room service" as they leave you food/drink/wine menus in your room and the phone has a room service button, yet if you want to order food, they will make it in their restaurant located at their hotel as previously mentioned and they do not deliver it... so it makes it pointless room service. Overall it was a nice villa, it was pretty quiet, and not too far away from old town Chania (10-15mins).

We were so happy we stayed at this charming and sophisticated boutique hotel. It is a little gem in the heart of the historic area. Our room had wonderful views of the water and it was easy to walk to restaurants and shops. The staff was amazing, starting with the owner who personally walked around greeting guests. The hotel has a great feel to it. We definitely recommend it, staying there was memorable experience.