Mark Warner Holidays Reviews 378

Great staff.
Social table worked well.
Wine with dinner important

Usually use Neilson but thought we would try Club Mark Warner to Greece Lesbos
Totally avoid . My husband sails and road bike rides . There was only 1 guide for each ride , he was also the mechanic of the bikes . The bikes were totally dangerous , they were 2 years old , brakes didn’t work properly ,
and so many more faults . Bike riders had to turn around or be collected of bike failed on the rides .
Riders at the back were left behind as no back guide , not the guides fault but totally Club Mark Warners . The fitness instructor was amazing but there was only her doing all the classes . Thankfully there were never anymore than 8 people in the classes as there was not enough equipment .
The gym was an utter disgrace , tiny , equipment not working and missing equipment in there . The overall fitness manager was totally full of himself and totally shot you down in flames if you were not happy with anything .
The hotel itself was very good with lovely rooms . The breakfast however was poor with tinned chopped up fruit instead of fresh . The dinner was ok with plenty of choice but quite oily .
Lesbos itself was a gorgeous little town and easy to access.
Would I go back ? Definitely a big no! And I would never use Club mark Warner again -very disappointed.

Staff were excellent, especially Fiona and Georgia. Knowledgeable, helpful, friendly, always smiling. Location of chalet hotel really good. Rooms good size. The social table is a great idea to make it more chalet than hotel. Food was good. Pool too cold though, and the hot tub was more a ice tub!!!

Hot tub cold. Food good

We holidayed in Oct half term - Multiple issues experienced;

The swimming pool was too cold to use for either leisure, fitness classes or the kids' club activities.
The indoor spa pool was unheated when we first arrived. They heated it up later in the week but it was too small to use for fitness or kids' activities and our teenage kids weren't allowed to play in there as it was a 'quiet' space.
Halfway through our holiday the Turkish Sailing Federation turned up at the resort and cordoned off the main beach and sea swimming area so the beach and sea swimming area were also unavailable to MW Guests.
Many of the boats also covered the beach volleyball pitch so that was also unavailable - Kids were offered alternative activity of playing Dobble and Mafia.
OVERALL - NO POOL AVAILABLE / VERY LITTLE BEACH OR SEA SWIMMING AVAILABLE - the small area of beach and small sea area which was available for swimming was backed by motor boats - not pleasant view from the beach or pleasant to swim when a motor boat starts up.

Cycling wasn't available to under 14's - not made clear on the website before we booked. Half of cycling routes were on very busy main roads, also not many alternative routes to cycle as a lot of surrounding area is military.

Not enough staff available in the watersports area, all tuition booked up until the day before our departure.

Daughter got stuck in a lift and was told to climb down whilst doors were held open manually.

A staff gathering held in the room above one of our hotel rooms one night - kept awake until past 3am.

3 days of our stay there was either no hot water or very little water pressure in the rooms.

The staff in the spa were increidbly pushy, everyone who went in for a taster session were told that they needed 'multiple medical massages'!

Chocolate spread on the buffet contained nuts but was not labelled.

Our complaint about all of the above was met with such a ridiculous generic response - showing that MW really didn't care about our holdiay experience. They offered us money off our next MW booking which was less than the offers available from their regular marketing emails.

In Summary - the activities and watersports style of holiday is an absolutely winning formula especially if you have teenage kids, but we certainly would never return to Phokaia and will be booking our holiday this year thorugh another company which offers the same style of holiday.

The rooms, staff and food were very good
Some other aspects were not so good
The beach is small and sparse
Only about 7 metres of sand before the sea
Some of the parasols were in poor condition
There is a road which has to crossed before getting to the beach
The dinghy we took for a sail was in poor condition with one sail missing and toe straps broken
There were no locks on the WC cubicles
Some of the WC cisterns ran continously all the time we were there - I reckon that used about 12000 litres of water in a week
I think some aspects of the resort need a capable maintenace team working under the instruction of an observant site manager

First things first, the Mark Warner staff are exceptional and the facilities and teaching/coaching is fantastic, I’d have no hesitation recommending them, however, they were let down by the hotel. We were in an annexe block and the room was functional at best, but of a poor standard. We suffered 6 power cuts one night, the wi-fi was virtually non-existent and impossible to connect to, the shower drainage flowed back up into the bathroom from an overflow pipe, and we had ants! There was also vomiting bug going around, my wife had it, but there was NO communication of this from the hotel or any extra cleaning protocols put in place to mitigate it. We assumed my wife had food poisoning but then found out about the bug via hearing rumours and conversations around the site.
Again, the facilities and staff provided by Mark Warner were fabulous, the room and hotel in general left a huge amount to be desired and not commensurate with the price we paid.

Sadly Mark Warner has a shocking lack of corporate social responsibility. The aggressive "tennis coach" who was so nasty to my son he refused to try tennis boasted that all the old sports equipment is thrown away rather than donated to the local ( clearly quite poor school ) as he can't be bothered and just chucks it all . There were stray cats and kittens at the resort. Mark Warner could easily afford to neuter and turn them into the resort pets. No water stations so guests are forced to buy bottled water which was plonked on the table without asking then charged for. Staff will let children sign for anything at the bar to appear on parents bill. Some staff ie Oscar at the bikes were brilliant and charming but most were clear that it was the last week of the season they were paid a pittance and their employment was ending the day the final guests left and they could not be bothered. My child was a week off his 14 birthday so had to be in the 10 - 13 age group which is fair enough as that is the rules but the activities were very babyish with no imagination ie find the plastic cup and face painting. The woman running it had no idea how to engage children and just said they would be banned if they did listen to her and exaggerated her complaints. The other staff then openly discussed their irritation with some of the boys. From arrival when I was told I had missed the welcome meeting because the wrong time had been printed on the leaflet but it was too late to change it so basically what did I want to know communication was terrible. Staff won't tell you where the local supermarket is ( map would be handy ) telling you everything you need is in resort as MW don't want you not spending all your money with them. No maps given out for bike rides and my son was told to meet at the waterfront, very vague, when he did not see his group as they were meeting behind the life jackets so missed his session his group leader just blamed him for not seeing them and was not bothered instead of taking on board it's important to have a clear meeting point for children not just say meet on the whole beach. Feedback was ignored she was clearly just counting the days down till the season was over and there was no energy or enthusiasm for the kids ( total contrast to the great child group leader at Lemnos my son had been with at MW in summer) It does not take much to tell guests that the paddle boarding closes at 5pm instead of saying you have 15 minutes to get off the water. Everything had to be found out from other guests as nothing was communicated properly. Local staff were nice but their priority was rushing you out of the restaurant and if you didn't watch your plate it was taken, It was run like a school canteen, rush guests to eat as fast as possible and get out and snatch plates off table the second a fork hits the plate. But in conclusion is was the poor child care and lack of any community spirit by Mark Warner and a tennis coach who was so unpleasant when I asked if my son could try tennis telling him balls would be flying around?? so he didn't that means I will not rebook as I had intended for next summer. Mark Warner neuter the poor cats on your property and vaccinate them and donate to a local charity to help the sick and injured ones in Paleos and give your old sport's equipment to the local school and pick up the plastic around the resort. You should be a member of the community not indifferent or too mean to tell guests where the local shops are incase they send a few euros in support of the locals and not your organisation

Whilst we enjoyed our holiday there were many areas which we feel need improvement to reflect the value for money. It cost us a considerable amount for the week and we were dissapointed with certain things. We had to request to move room after spending three nights in a room which stank of cigarette smoke - coming from another room. The last two days of our holiday we were not allowed access to parts of the beach due to a big sailing competition - we should have been told about this prior to our arrival. The restaurant was so busy with the sailing lot that paying guests struggled to find tables in the evening. Many other guests were also unhappy about this. Tennis courts looked very tired. Booked spa treatments but they didn’t seem to have a clue what was going on and gave us the wrong treatments so we cancelled others.
Swimming pool was absolutely freezing.

Whilst we enjoyed our break we will not be returning and to be honest not sure we would look at Mark Warner again

The holiday was, for the most part, classic Mark Warner and excellent. However the Turkish sailing team descended on the hotel and completely took over the beach front - I have pictures whereby there was only around 10metres of the entire beach reserved for us guests and the kids clubs weren’t allowed to take the kids in the sea because of the sailing boats coming and going. Having paid so much (£7k+) for a family of 5 this felt like a bit of a cheek as we were essentially subsidising the Turkish sailing team which is very unfair.
This was our second visit to this resort and I would not return unless we were guaranteed that this wouldn’t happen again.

The other issue with this holiday is that the team are split. Mark Warner responsible for some customer relations, kids clubs and water sports, all of which are excellent but Turkish team run the hotel and their English is as good as my Turkish(!) and service can be pretty poor. Reception go out of their way to be un helpful and the guy who books the excursions is hardly at his desk and believes you’re there for his convenience. This resulted in our 2 families (9 people) being turned away from a boat we had booked for a sunset trip to Foca. Cue crying children and very grumpy adults but at least we saved the £20pp cost for a 30 min trip when the sun had set before the boat left in any case! However all staff at the restaurant are fabulous as are the local animation team.

On the plus side the childcare was excellent, special mention for Jess with the Mavericks and the sailing tuition was good (thanks Matthew). There are loads of activities to get involved in and other holiday guests were a lovely friendly bunch that it was easy to mix with. The food was great and the animation team were inclusive and super fun. The pool was freezing which was a shame but the sea was lovely (until the latter half of the week when we couldn’t even use that!)

Last time we visited in August, if the pool was heated the cooler temperatures wouldn’t have been an issue but def would pack more trousers and jumpers for evenings and some mornings were chilly with the wind.

Would have been 4.5 star if it weren’t for the sailing team issues.

Paid for sea view but room was not facing the sea. Tennis balls were awful, paddle courts always fully booked and my 11 year old son was not allowed to take a bike out so we were confined to resort.
Food ok, room cleaned every day.

A Norovirus style bug swept the hotel. My family and I were ill on holiday and since we've come home. Many people were ill on the plane. No measures were put in place to contain the sickness e.g. additional cleaning, gloves for the buffet, hand sanitiser etc. We spoke to the manager but he didn't feel that many people were ill and so there was nothing to be done. When we called the hotel an hour after leaving to see if they had found an item of lost property, the receptionist was unwilling to help. The sports instructors and kids club team were great.

Good week on balance but a bit of an issue with noise from the bar keeping us all awake until late most nights. One evening was particularly loud and when pointing out to reception staff that kids were trying to sleep the Turkish manager just stated that the hotel has a license to play music till midnight. Mark Warner staff better at customer relations but seemed powerless (hotel is Turkish owned). The Greek resorts that are owned and operated by MW are better for this reason. Also tennis facilities pretty run down but good coaching. Water sports kit good but note that wind is often offshore so not great for the beginners and quite gusty.

The most incredible place! Fab room, fab food and fab activities. Just the best family holiday ever! The entertainment team made us feel like family, excellent

Great location and friendly staff. We were disappointed with the amount of equipment available. The resort was only half full but there were not nearly enough bikes and of those a high proportion were not road worthy. We had the same issue with the amount of water sport equipment and spaces available on "Learn to" sessions, however this equipment was in good condition.

Love Paleros, amazing food, lovely restaurant and hotel staff including amazing manager, fab beach and beach and fitness and cycling staff are fantastic. Love the bikes! The pool area is beautiful. I think the bedroom bathroom could do with an update as lots of limescale and our room had a lot of ants coming in. Didn’t feel 100% fresh and that felt like wear and tear / design related as the cleaners are wonderful. The restaurant and beach bar could be cosier / more romantic like the resort at Rhodes, felt a bit canteeny. The tennis centre has broken benches which could be dangerous and the rackets were in poor shape. Rhodes has much better. Also, I feel the energy and standard of tennis coaches was possibly very slightly less high than other years. Could be the late season but they are super nice.

Very well organised from start to finish. Booking was simple, the journey to Rhodes and back was calm, the hotel was clean and comfortable with great pools, there were lots of excellent activities, the staff were friendly, helpful and efficient, the food was very good. The holiday exceeded our expectations and was great value for money.

Beautiful grounds/garden. Lots of space. Good availability of loungers/cabanas etc. great sailing equipment. Good coaching. Great food.

George the Manager at Kamari was fantastic as were his team. So friendly and helpful nothing too much trouble.

Great location in beautiful bay.
Neil, the tennis coach, superb.
Food high quality and plenty of choice.
Rooms and facilities great.
Entertainment good.

Great facilities and staff in a fantastic location.
The food was outstanding: great variety and quality.
The staff were fantastic. Highlights include the Sunday bike ride with Gary (competent, friendly and a great leader), Tennis drills with Luke (brilliant coach and great at managing high numbers of all abilities) and the waterfront staff who are happy to help / rescue you whatever your level of incompetence!
On top of that we made some great new friends.
Can't wait to come back :-)
Best holiday ever.