Hotel Villa Flora Relais

Months in the planning, 28 hours flying from Australia, our 7 week road/fly trip travelling from Athens to Spain, was interrupted by a terrible stay at this place. We chose it for a pitstop to relax and regenerate and their promise of magnificent food, cooking classes and their proclaimed wine cellar. It is nice sure, if you can look passed its faux building and the rubber pool. It has a view, but reality is it is in a very shabby part of the country, surrounded by litter everywhere...so a gated oasis in the cheap end of town. The staff were amazing (5 stars)....BUT the manager was hostile and insolent,... and this review is specifically linked to him. Rarely would I do a review like this but the bottom line, the place makes all sorts of promises on their website and their intranet, mostly fake or staged, this place it is NOT a place for travellers - you will be nothing more that an annoyance to him. We stayed for 4 nights and was only allowed a seat in the restaurant once - why...because they had events on for locals. A wedding, then a baby shower, then a birthday and then a christening, all taking the whole restaurant. It is clearly a place for the well-to-do locals. The food was magnificent on the only night we could get a table, and the service impeccable, but the manager was MIA for us with no communication at all. We had booked 6 months in advance, booked the lux room and had requested cooking classes - why else would you stay in a gated location way out of town, claiming to offer really special stuff. We received no notice, no apology, no alternatives, no understanding....nothing...and when we asked HIM for assistance, the scowl on his face was palpable. The place is sweet, but at the end of the day, fake. The staff, including kitchen, were 1st grade, so manager goes from 0 stars to 2 stars for, I assume, his recruitment. My apologies to the staff - you were great and very diplomatic. But you mr flashy no sox manager, you have one job...

We chose this place as it was kind of in-between the Valley of Temples and the Roman villa with the mosaics. The hotel is very nice and quite modern inside. There are 2 entrances, we chose the wrong one and ended up in the lower car park and then had to lug our cases up a hill to the hotel. Both the entrances have a closed automatic gate and what we should have done was drive further up the road and gone in the top entrance to drop the cases off then park below. The grounds are really nice and there is a lovely terrace area where you can relax overlooking the valley. It also has a nice looking swimming pool. During the day there seemed to be just one member of staff who acted as check in and also served drinks. More staff appeared in the evening. The room was very nice. The shower was fine but was leaking water from the hose when on. It didn't matter that much though. The staff don't speak huge amounts of English but enough to get by when it came to food and drinks. We ate there and the restaurant filled up with locals who obviously rate the place as the food was really good. Breakfast was fine as well, We enjoyed the hotel and would happily stay there again.