Magna Grecia Boutique Hotel

I visited The Acropolis view was amazing. The room was nothing special but very clear and the service also good. I would recommend the Magna Grecia Boutique Hotel in Athens.

location,location,location! The Acropolis view was amazing. Food, service, location and accommodation all excellent. I would recommend the Magna Grecia Boutique Hotel in Athens.

My wife and I €" both middle-aged, seasoned business and leisure travellers (more than 60/70 hotel nights per year) €" spent two separate nights at the Magna Grecia in February 2008. It was not an unpleasant experience, but it was not what we expected, and we would not recommend the hotel to our friends.

The hotel has a number of positive points, but falls short of what you would expect from a four star hotel. The price/quality relationship is not bad, but we have stayed in three star hotels which were much better (even if more expensive).

The hotel is housed in a XIX century building, which we consider a plus. Its location, in the heart of the Plaka, is very good. The breakfast room on the roof is very pleasant, with a magnificent view. The variety and quality of the buffet for the breakfast was also good. We had reserved de luxe rooms with panoramic view of the Acropolis (at 117.00 euros a night including breakfast) and the last promise was certainly met. We could see the Acropolis from our beds; it is difficult to do better in terms of views.

However € The renovation of the building has not been very thorough or appropriate. The bathrooms in the two rooms we were given appear as masonry cabins dropped in a corner of the rooms. They formally have everything you need, but are very, very small. In room 103, you have to put your left foot in the shower when you sit on the toilet and, in room 203, you have to wriggle out of the shower to pick up the soap if it falls on the floor: crouching or bending are not possible.

If space is a structural problem, management could do more to fix a series of simpler, daily issues. In both rooms, the TV sets were unplugged and we had to try and find the right cables and plugs ourselves. None of the remote controls worked. We operated manually the first TV set and gave up on the second. In the €" very simple €" wardrobes there were combination safes, but they were on the floor (try and enter the combination in a safe on the floor!), they were not fixed to anything (though quite bulky) and, above all, they were closed. For some strange reason you had to ask the concierge to open them! In room 203 there was a small, cheap and old electric fridge in a corner to serve as mini-bar. It looked awful and totally out of place in a room that was pretending to retain some of its past glory. We do not particularly care for mini-bars and would have certainly preferred not have one instead of having that ugly thing next to our suitcases.

We were particularly disappointed by the fact that our remarks on some of these problems were met by the arrogant statement that nobody had ever complained and, yes, they were a four star hotel!

We must have stayed at more than twenty hotels in Greece and are impressed by the good quality they usually offer. We cannot understand how this hotel could be classified as € four stars €. It looks like a nice two star proposition that could be a good bargain for young travellers. Next time we will be in Athens we will look for something more expensive and of at least three/four star quality.