Kallithea Vip Suite

I've stayed at a lot of hotels around Athens, and this one's in my top five for price, location, room size, and cleanliness. It was easy to find, clean, and fairly quiet despite the Athens traffic. Parking was easy to find, too, and staff responded quickly when I had a question or needed help. I'll stay here again on my next visit.

The building is new and well maintained, but the service is a mess. I booked an apartment and was given something completely different. I never got the check-in instructions, either. They also said my booking was through Expedia, even though I booked through Booking.

The apartment had some useful features: the sofa bed was really comfortable, there were three toilets and two showers, and each room had a TV. But one TV remote was missing, a bathroom had mold, and all three bathrooms smelled of cigarette smoke, which made them unpleasant to use. The living room curtain was barely hanging on and had already lost about five rings. The chairs wobbled and had odd stains, the glasses weren't clean enough for us to want to use them, and ants showed up all around the sofa bed on the first day and wouldn't go away. The biggest problem started when we arrived and had no check-in details. We called and messaged the company repeatedly without getting through. Booking.com couldn't reach them either, so after four hours we canceled the booking. We'd spent five hours wandering the city with all our luggage, had to cancel several plans, and only then got a call back. The first thing they asked was, "How can I help you?" as if we hadn't already explained that we were stranded in a new city with our bags. We rebooked because we were tired and didn't want to find somewhere else. When we asked for a discount, they offered a €6 bottle of wine, then, after we declined, a whole €12 off. After I put up a review on Booking.com, someone from the company called and asked me to take it down because it would look bad for them. She didn't say please or sorry. On the call, she said we should have told them about the ants and mold. I feel the apartment shouldn't have had mold in the first place if it was being rented out, and our experience showed that getting hold of the company about a problem isn't very effective. It wasn't the worst place I've stayed, but calling it 'Luxury residences' is a stretch.

The rooms were good and clean, the kitchen had appliances and cutlery, and staff on WhatsApp were helpful. They also let us stay a few hours later because our flight was in the afternoon. There were some frustrating issues, though. The hot water was off at first and there was no note explaining that we had to work it out ourselves. You have to press a button every time you want to shower. Water leaked from the bathrooms into the room, and the AC was very noisy every half hour when the water pump kicked in. The AC was also dripping water, as shown in the pictures. The pool is tiny, about kid-sized, so forget it if you're hoping to swim.