Continental Palace

Title: A holiday that could have been so much better with clearer information

We recently stayed at the Continental Palace in Kos and, unfortunately, the experience left us feeling very disappointed — particularly with the information we were given when booking through TUI.

The holiday itself had some positives. Kos is beautiful, and we enjoyed getting out and exploring the island. The location of the hotel was also convenient for getting into Kos Town, which we really liked.

However, there were several things that really took the shine off our holiday.

Firstly, the hotel states its a 4 star for the amenities there is would class this at 3 star

We were also particularly unhappy about the charge for our final day. We had been led to believe through the TUI information that the cost would be around £30.66, but when we arrived we were told it would be €10 per person/per night, which came to around €70 for us. This was an unexpected additional expense that we simply hadn't budgeted for.

The biggest disappointment came on our final day. Our flight wasn't until around 11pm, and we were told that we had to check out at 11am. We understood that we couldn't keep the room all day, but we were extremely disappointed to discover that once we had checked out, we were effectively no longer treated as guests — including not being able to have our evening meal, despite having paid for a 7-night holiday.

We had already run out of euros by this point and therefore had to find additional money to pay for food in Kos Town before returning for our transfer. We had paid for our holiday expecting the arrangements to be as advertised, so having to spend even more money unexpectedly on our final evening was frustrating.

What made this worse was that we had not felt these details were made sufficiently clear to us before travelling. Had we known exactly what the additional charges and final-day arrangements would involve, we could have budgeted and planned accordingly.

We raised our concerns with TUI afterwards and were particularly disappointed by their response, as they offered no compensation at all, despite the issues we experienced.

We don't expect everything on holiday to be perfect, and we appreciate that hotels have check-out times and that additional services can have charges. Our frustration is really about clear communication and transparency. When you're booking through a major holiday company, you expect the information on the booking to accurately reflect what you're going to experience.

Kos itself is lovely and there are definitely things we enjoyed about our trip, but unfortunately the unexpected costs and the way our final day was handled left us feeling that we didn't get the experience we had paid and planned for.

When asking for information on historical sites each time we were met with come back later.. one occasion half way through a conversation the receptionist stop and greeted what I assume is returning customer we dismissed to be told yet again come back later.
There was no basic items in the room tea coffee. No iron also . Our rooms only had new towels and sheets floors we're never cleaned during our stay

Would we return? Probably not to this hotel, and we would certainly be much more careful about checking the small print and final-day arrangements before booking another TUI package holiday. Definitely return to Kos it's a beautiful island with friendly people and places to visit.

We were very happy with Popi Düring our meals. She was friendly, open, and positive, and always responded quickly to our requests. She made us feel comfortable and created a pleasant atmosphere. We really appreciated her attentive and kind service.