Apollonia Beach Resort & Spa
Apollonia Beach Resort and Spa is a 336-room beachfront resort built in 1977 on the long sandy shore at Amoudara, 15 km by road from Heraklion airport, set in mature gardens that guests rate far more highly than the buildings. It holds 4.2 out of 5 across 1,057 Tripadvisor reviews and 7.7 out of 10 on Booking.com across 155. Our verdict lands at 7.1 out of 10: a genuinely pleasant four-star garden resort carrying a five-star label its rooms no longer support. We earn a commission if you book through the links on this page, which never decides what we write.
Hotel information
| Hotel | Apollonia Beach Resort & Spa |
|---|---|
| Address | Andrea Papandreou, Amoudara |
| Type | Resorts |
| Style | Beachfront garden resort, half board and all inclusive |
| Signature | Mature gardens and a tamarisk grove; a main pool you can swim lengths in |
| Keys | 336 rooms, bungalows and suites; built 1977, Deluxe rooms renovated 2026 |
| Dining | 4 restaurants: Adonis buffet, beach taverna, Al Capone Italian, Avocado vegan |
| Beach | Blue Flag sandy beach in front; rock slabs in the shallows, water shoes advised |
| Nearest airport | Heraklion (HER), about 15.4 km by road, roughly 15 minutes |
| Booking.com rating | 7.7/10 (155 reviews) |
| Tripadvisor rating | 4.2/5 (1,057 reviews) |
| CreteLocals score | 7.1/10 · read the verdict |
Booking.com and Tripadvisor scores checked on September 22, 2026.
Location
Apollonia Beach Resort & Spa is located at Andrea Papandreou, Amoudara, in Amoudara Heraklion. The map below shows the exact spot; Google Maps and Waze give turn-by-turn directions.
Who Apollonia suits, and who should skip it
Apollonia suits guests who want gardens, a large swimmable pool and a wide sandy beach close to Heraklion at a mid-range price, and who will book a renovated category deliberately. Skip it if you expect five-star rooms, if a chaotic peak-hour buffet ruins an evening, or if you cannot climb stairs when a lift fails. The lists below come from recurring themes across its 1,057 Tripadvisor reviews and 155 Booking.com reviews.
Advantages
- Mature gardens and a tamarisk grove that stop a 336-room resort feeling like a fortress, the single most praised feature
- A main pool large enough to swim real lengths, unusual at this size and price
- Aegeo Spa treatments draw uniformly warm reviews, with therapists named repeatedly
- 4 restaurants including a beach taverna, an Italian and a vegan kitchen, plus an Exceptional Breakfast badge on Booking.com
- Blue Flag sandy beach directly in front, with well-spaced loungers
- Honest mid-range pricing, from about 253 euros a night in July, with a bus stop outside and free parking
Disadvantages
- Dated and worn rooms are the most frequent complaint: peeling paint, bathroom mould, chipped tiles, stained carpets and loud fridges in unrenovated stock
- Tripadvisor’s own tags read Tired, Dated, Pricey, Mixed and Inconsistent, which is unusually blunt
- The main restaurant is undersized for the resort and chaotic at peak, with waits for a table
- Lifts out of service is a repeated, specific complaint, including both failing for hours
- Charges that are not published in advance: a paid room safe, and an all-inclusive upgrade that rose from 20 to 30 euros per person per day for 2026
- Rock slabs in the shallows mean water shoes, and the shoreline power station is still visible
The rooms: 336 keys, and only some of them renovated
Apollonia runs 336 rooms, bungalows and suites across a five-storey main building and 3 bungalow complexes, and the single most important booking decision here is which generation of room you get.
For 2026 the hotel renamed its categories and rolled out refurbished Deluxe and Superior rooms, described as fully renovated with photographs added in March. Everything else is closer to its 1977 origins, and that is where the mould, the worn furniture and the noisy air conditioning appear in reviews. Book a renovated category by its current name directly with the hotel rather than relying on an aggregator’s older labels, and note there are no swim-up or private-pool rooms here at all.
The gardens, the pools and the Aegeo spa
The grounds are the reason to come: a large landscaped park with a tamarisk grove, a main pool big enough for lengths, children’s pools with slides and an indoor pool at the spa.
Two operating details are worth knowing before you book. The pool is supervised and open 10:00 to 18:00 only, and the slides run in two short windows, 11:00 to 13:00 and 15:00 to 17:00. Dinner is at the Adonis buffet with three a la carte options, a Cretan taverna on the sand, an Italian and a vegan restaurant, but the a la carte tables need booking at least 3 days ahead and guests report being refused even when rooms look half empty. The Aegeo Spa runs more than 50 treatments with a sauna and hammam, and the gym is charged separately.
How to get there
Apollonia sits on Andrea Papandreou Street at Amoudara, about 15.4 km from Heraklion airport (HER) by road, a drive of roughly 15 minutes because the route runs around the city. Heraklion itself is about 7 km east, under 20 minutes by bus.
Three transport options cover the trip, and each fits a different stay. A pre-booked transfer or taxi is the simplest arrival, since the published straight-line distance of 8 km understates the drive; our guide to taxi and airport transfer services in Crete lists the operators and typical prices. A hire car suits touring and parks free on site, and our car rental in Crete page compares local rates. The public bus stops directly outside and reaches the city in under 20 minutes, which is the cheapest way to use Heraklion in the evenings.
The Crete Locals review
Apollonia earns a 7.1 because the estate is better than the rooms, and the gap has become the story. The gardens are genuinely lovely, the main pool is one of the few on this coast you can actually swim in, the spa is well liked and the beach is wide and sandy. Guests who book knowing it is a comfortable older resort tend to leave happy, and a good number say the price-to-performance ratio is fair.
What drags the score down is the five-star claim. Tripadvisor’s automated tags read Tired, Dated and Pricey, 105 of its 1,057 reviews are poor or terrible, and the complaints are physical and repeatable: mould, peeling plaster, failing lifts, a buffet room too small for the building it serves. One August 2026 guest went as far as filing a formal quality complaint with TUI asking it to re-examine the rating. The hotel’s public replies defend the category by pointing at Greek certification rules and arguing the star count covers services rather than furnishings, which is technically arguable and beside the point a guest is making.
Two things are quietly improving. The refurbished Deluxe rooms for 2026 are the right response, and the Linoperamata power station on the shoreline has been out of service since autumn 2025 and kept only as back-up, so the view is no longer an industrial one even if the chimneys remain. Set against that, the unannounced rise in the all-inclusive upgrade from 20 to 30 euros a day is exactly the kind of charge that turns a fair-value stay into a grievance.
Book Apollonia as a four-star garden resort at a four-star price: a renovated Deluxe room, half board rather than the upgrade unless you have done the arithmetic, water shoes for the shallows, and the bus into Heraklion for dinner. May, June and September suit it best, when the buffet room is not being asked to do the impossible.
