Minos Imperial Luxury Beach Resort & Spa
Minos Imperial, the resort that ran for years as Radisson Blu Beach Resort Milatos, is a 318-room family resort on the emerald bay of Milatos in Lasithi, north-east Crete. Minos Imperial keeps 2 private sandy beaches and a wellness spa guests praise by name, and its scores tell a split story: 3.9 out of 5 on Tripadvisor across 1,017 reviews and 8.1 out of 10 on Booking.com across 1,037. Our verdict lands at 7.0 out of 10: a genuinely beautiful setting attached to the most inconsistent operation we have reviewed, which makes the booking price the deciding factor.
Hotel information
| Hotel | Minos Imperial Luxury Beach Resort & Spa |
|---|---|
| Address | Paraliaki Odos Milatou, Milatos Beach 724 00 |
| Type | Resorts |
| Style | Family beach resort on a remote bay |
| Signature | 2 private sandy beaches on Milatos's emerald bay; large wellness spa |
| Keys | 318 rooms, suites, and villas |
| Pools | 5 pools per the current official count |
| History | Ran as Radisson Blu Beach Resort Milatos; back to the Minos Imperial name |
| Nearest airport | Heraklion (HER), about 45 km by road |
| Booking.com rating | 8.1/10 (1,037 reviews) |
| Tripadvisor rating | 3.9/5 (1,017 reviews) |
| CreteLocals score | 7.0/10 · read the verdict |
Booking.com and Tripadvisor scores checked on September 19, 2026.
Location
Minos Imperial Luxury Beach Resort & Spa is located at Paraliaki Odos Milatou, Milatos Beach 724 00. The map below shows the exact spot; Google Maps and Waze give turn-by-turn directions.
Who Minos Imperial suits, and who should skip it
Minos Imperial suits travellers who want a quiet beach-and-pool week on a bay far from the strips, priced accordingly, and it can suit them well, because when the stay goes right the reviews read like love letters to the beach, the hammocks, and the spa. The lists below come from recurring themes in the resort’s 1,017 Tripadvisor reviews and 1,037 Booking.com reviews.
Advantages
- Setting on the emerald bay of Milatos, with 2 private sandy beaches, hammocks, and swings at the water
- Wellness spa praised in its own right, with named therapists and 5-star review titles
- Space of a full resort, with 318 keys, Zen gardens, and 5 pools including an adults’ chill-out pool
- A la carte restaurants and a beach bar alongside the buffet
- Sleep quality at 4.3, the best of its subratings, thanks to the remote quiet
- Milatos village tavernas a short walk for evenings off the resort
Disadvantages
- Consistency is the defining problem, with 24 percent of Tripadvisor reviews rating the stay poor or terrible
- Value and service both score 3.8, the lowest pair in our programme
- Facility condition and food quality draw recurring complaints
- Isolation cuts both ways, since excursions and alternatives are miles away
The rooms: 318 keys, ask for renovated stock
Minos Imperial spreads 318 rooms, suites, and villas across its gardens toward the bay, with the 4.1 rooms score averaging well-kept units against tired ones.
The room you get shapes the review you would write, so book specifically: ask for recently refreshed stock, sea-facing if the budget reaches it, and confirm the category in writing. The villas and upper suites collect the calmer feedback; the standard rooms are where the condition complaints live.
The bay, the spa and the gardens
The bay is the resort’s unanswerable asset: sheltered, emerald-clear water on 2 private sandy beaches, with hammocks and swings that fill every photo reel. The 5 pools, including the adults’ chill-out pool, back it up for the wind days.
The spa is the operation’s bright spot, unusual for a struggling scoreboard: deep-tissue massages and individual therapists are named in reviews often enough to be popular-mention chips, and wellness-titled 5-star reviews arrive steadily. Zen gardens with waterfalls thread the grounds, and Milatos village supplies the taverna evenings.
How to get there
Minos Imperial is about 45 km from Heraklion airport (HER) by road, a drive of roughly 45 minutes east past Malia to the Milatos turn. The resort sits on the shore road below Milatos village, far from any resort strip.
Three transport options cover the trip, and each fits a different stay. A pre-booked transfer or taxi is the practical arrival; our guide to taxi and airport transfer services in Crete lists the operators and typical prices. A hire car matters more here than at most resorts, given the isolation, and our car rental in Crete page compares local rates. The Milatos bus connection is thin, so plan on wheels of some kind.
The Crete Locals review
Minos Imperial is the review where we explain a number instead of defending one, because 7.0 is not the average of its parts, it is the distance between them. On its best week this is an 8.5: the bay glows, the beaches are half-empty, the spa delivers city-hotel treatments at sea level, and the isolation reads as luxury. On its worst week the same property produces the 1-star titles sitting on its recent first page, and 247 poor-or-terrible reviews out of 1,017 is not noise, it is a pattern.
The Radisson chapter explains some of the whiplash. The flag arrived in 2016 with international standards and marketing, and its departure returned the resort to independent operation under the old Minos Imperial name; guests booking on Radisson-era expectations meet a different machine. Value and service at 3.8 each say the rates have not yet re-agreed with the delivery.
What keeps the resort on our list at all is that the fundamentals cannot be operated away. The bay is among the loveliest hotel settings in eastern Crete, the beaches are genuinely private and sandy, and the spa team performs above the house average by every account. Guests who booked at package-deal prices, kept expectations at strong-4-star, and lived between beach, pool, and treatment table file the happy half of the record.
Book Minos Imperial only at a rate that prices the inconsistency in, ask for renovated rooms in writing, and treat the spa as the splurge. June and September flatter the bay most. And watch this page: an operation that steadies here would move the score sharply, because the setting was never the problem.
