Star Beach Village & Water Park
Hotel Star Beach Village & Water Park is Hersonissos’s fun factory: a 395-room, 4-star all-inclusive wrapped around its sister Star Beach Water Park, 50 metres from the sandy town beaches and the port. Guests score it 8.4 out of 10 on Booking.com and 4.2 out of 5 on Tripadvisor across 2,184 reviews. Our verdict lands at 7.6 out of 10: outstanding entertainment hardware at honest package prices, with basic rooms and built-in volume the equally honest trades.
Hotel information
| Hotel | Star Beach Village & Water Park |
|---|---|
| Address | Themistokleous 5, Hersonissos 700 14 |
| Type | Resorts |
| Style | Family and party all-inclusive, 4-star |
| Signature | Fused to Star Beach Water Park: slides, lazy river, foam parties, go-karts |
| Keys | 395 rooms across the village and the 2019 Annex |
| History | Rooms renovated 2016-2017; Annex built 2019 |
| Setting | In Hersonissos, 50 metres from the sandy beaches and port |
| Nearest airport | Heraklion (HER), about 25 km |
| Booking.com rating | 8.4/10 (861 reviews) |
| Tripadvisor rating | 4.2/5 (2,184 reviews) |
| CreteLocals score | 7.6/10 · read the verdict |
Booking.com and Tripadvisor scores checked on September 19, 2026.
Location
Star Beach Village & Water Park is located at Themistokleous 5, Hersonissos 700 14. The map below shows the exact spot; Google Maps and Waze give turn-by-turn directions.
Who Star Beach suits, and who should skip it
Star Beach suits families with slide-hungry kids and groups chasing the foam-party version of Crete, and it suits them because everything loud is included: the waterpark, the animation, the mini disco, the nightly shows. Light sleepers and romance bookings should read the disadvantages as a verdict. The lists below come from recurring themes in the hotel’s 2,184 Tripadvisor reviews and 861 Booking.com reviews.
Advantages
- Waterpark access built in, with slides, lazy river, and foam parties beside the rooms
- Pools numbering 9 before counting the park itself
- Position 50 metres from sandy beaches and 10 minutes’ walk from Hersonissos centre
- Go-kart track and animation team keeping teens genuinely busy
- Dining spread over the main restaurant, the Cretan Star, and the noodle bar
- Package prices that undercut every comparable fun-stack on the coast
Disadvantages
- Noise is the defining fact, with music and parties running as the product
- Rooms score 4.1 and read basic-to-dated despite the 2016-2017 renovations
- Value scores 4.1, with hidden costs and paid extras the recurring theme
- Cleanliness and service lapse at peak, including a recent buffet allergy mishandling worth naming
The rooms: Annex first, ground floors with care
Star Beach spreads 395 keys from doubles to superior family rooms, with the 2019-built Annex the newest stock and the village blocks carrying the 2016-2017 renovation generation.
Book the Annex for the freshest rooms, ask for distance from the party pools if any sleep matters, and treat ground-floor rooms near the entertainment as the trade they are. Families of 4 should confirm the superior-family layouts rather than assume.
The waterpark, the foam and the noodle bar
The waterpark is the whole thesis: slides, the lazy river, foam parties on schedule, and the go-kart track at the edge, free to guests and steps from every block.
Nine hotel pools absorb the overflow, the sandy town beaches wait across the road, and the food keeps pace rather than aspiring: the main buffet for volume, the Cretan Star for the local plates, the noodle bar and toastie counters for the between hours, ice cream on tap for the under-12 economy. Hersonissos’s strip picks up whoever the mini disco releases.
How to get there
Star Beach sits on Themistokleous Street in Hersonissos, about 25 km from Heraklion airport (HER), a drive of roughly 30 minutes, with the town centre a 10-minute walk and the beach across the road.
Three transport options cover the trip, and each fits a different stay. A pre-booked transfer or taxi is the family-simple arrival; our guide to taxi and airport transfer services in Crete lists the operators and typical prices. A hire car adds Knossos and the plateau, and our car rental in Crete page compares local rates. The north-coast bus stops in town constantly through the season.
The Crete Locals review
Star Beach is the easiest review in this programme to write fairly, because the hotel has never once pretended. Its name is its manifesto, its foam parties are on the poster, and the 4-star plate is worn without apology; guests arrive knowing the deal, and the ones who rate it Excellent, 1,266 of them, are grading the deal delivered. As a teens-and-slides machine at package prices, the coast offers nothing comparable this close to a real town and a real beach.
The scores tell the other half without cruelty. Rooms, value, and sleep at 4.1 each describe a hotel where the money went to the park rather than the pillows, where extras nibble the package, and where the soundtrack is structural: booking Star Beach for quiet is ordering soup and reviewing the fork. The recent allergy mishandling at the buffet is the one file entry we weight as a genuine operations flag rather than a fit mismatch.
Our 7.6 is therefore a fit score more than a quality score: for its own audience the week runs 8-and-up, for the wrong booking it runs 6, and the difference is entirely decided before arrival. The Travelers’ Choice badge on 2,184 reviews says the right bookings outnumber the wrong ones comfortably.
Book Star Beach with the family that will use every slide twice: an Annex room away from the stages, the allergy conversation had directly with the chef’s office, and the town beaches for the recovery mornings. July and August are its true season, the only entry in this programme for which we will say so.
