Coral Beach Hotel and Resort (Paphos)

The Coral Beach Hotel and Resort is about 20 minutes from Kato Paphos in Cyprus. (Fly into Paphos airport.) It has over 700 rooms and a number of executive and even Royal Suites.

We were met at the airport by limousine and taken to the hotel reception area where we were allocated a room. My first impression was the sheer opulance of it all. The reception area was very expensively furnished and huge glass doors along the whole wall ...
...formal manner and use the Coral Restaurant. The outside restaurants are only operative in the season. There is a dress code in force here. You may wear casual dress in the Coral Restaurant but not beach wear or shorts. The other restaurants require formal dress.

The food was well cooked and there was lots of variety. Each evening featured a different cuisine such as Italian, Greek, Cypriot, French and International. There was live ... more

The Coral Beach Hotel and Resort is about 20 minutes from Kato Paphos in Cyprus. (Fly into Paphos airport.) It has over 700 rooms and a number of executive and even Royal Suites.

We were met at the airport by limousine and taken to the hotel reception area where we were allocated a room. My first impression was the sheer opulance of it all. The reception area was very expensively furnished and huge glass doors along the whole wall at the back opened on to a terrace which displayed bright red bouganvilia and orange honeysuckle. The vines twisted and climbed across the sheltered terraces. Inside the room were huge displays of luscious plants with huge colourful blooms and shiney green leaves.

ROOMS:
A porter took our luggage to our room and checked the mini bar for us. (Very important this if you don't want to risk being charged for someone else's drinks!)

Comfortably furnished with a lounge area, bathroom, furnished balcony, TV and mini bar.
Rooms are light and airy and you can choose a mountain, or a sea view. We chose the mountain view.

I didn't like the fact that the room had twin beds as we had requested, but they were pushed together against one headboard. First job was to pull them apart and enjoy a hot soak in the marble tiled bathroom with the complimentary toiletries.

The fan in our room didn't cool the air properly. We were informed that they are only 100% efficient in summer when the air conditioning is switched on. This didn't present too much of a problem but we did need to keep the balcony doors open when the sun was on the room as temperatures, even in winter, can go up to seventy five in this part of Cyprus.

The mini bar price list was very expensive so we decided to use it only in 'emergency'. A can of Coca Cola cost CYP1.50 and a 500 mils bottle of water cost CYP1.40.(Cyprus pounds equated to around £1.13 sterling.) We soon realised this and bought drinks from the small supermarket across the road from the hotel to drink in our room.

FOOD:
Five restaurants to choose from. You can dine in style and select from a full a la carte menu, or do things in a less formal manner and use the Coral Restaurant. The outside restaurants are only operative in the season. There is a dress code in force here. You may wear casual dress in the Coral Restaurant but not beach wear or shorts. The other restaurants require formal dress.

The food was well cooked and there was lots of variety. Each evening featured a different cuisine such as Italian, Greek, Cypriot, French and International. There was live music in the dining room too. If you wished to dine in one of the a la carte restaurants and you were staying dinner, bed and breakfast you could do so and you were given a voucher towards your dinner thus reducing the price.

The breakfast menu offered a huge selection from dates, honey, cereal, traditional English breakfast, and fruit to yoghurt, cheese and figs, a variety of breads, fruit juice and muffins and homemade jams and marmalades. I never ate as much breakfast!

Dinner was superb every evening. As well as the food provided for the theme night there were always lots of alternatives. The American night was one of my favourites. They offered prawns, melon and various salads for an entree. Second course was soup (always two varieties), or a selection of other dishes. Main course (for American night) was homemade beef burgers (made from proper fried beefsteak and onions), or turkey and a selection of vegetables including pumpkin, sweet potatoes and American fries. Dessert of course was centred round apple pie and icecream (three kinds and I had to have a scoop of each!).

SERVICE:
Excellent service. Pleasant staff who could all speak excellent English and went out of their way to help. Nothing was too much trouble. I called room service and asked if they would provide us with a new corkscrew as the one in our bar had vanished. Five minutes late a wine waiter appeared, complete with white napkin over his arm. He insisted on opening our wine and then left the corkscrew incase we needed it again.

FACILITIES:
Several coffee bars and lounge bars, swimming pool, sauna, and health spa. Craft centre offering lessons in pottery, etc. Children's club (can't tell you much about this as I don't have children this young).

Private beach which was spotlessly clean and watersports, swimming pools (two outside and one in!) Terraces and gardens, sunbeds and lots of palm trees. Coffee in the lounge cost £2 for a pot and a fizzy drink came in a long glass with an assortment of fruit and a price tag of around £2.50. This is very expensive and it mounts up. We used the in-house coffee shops a few times but resorted to using the kettle and coffee we had taken with us and drinking our coffee on our balcony if we wanted more than one cup.

The best facility of all in my opinion is the hotel night club. It was open from 9pm each evening and had live music, dancers, and other caberet acts. It wasn't really what we in UK call a nightclub. In fact it was more like a seventies cocktail bar. Things weren't exactly rocking but it was enough for us.

COST:
This can be an expensive place to stay in high season. (It runs into thousands for 2 weeks.The tarrif card quotes £900 per week bed and breakfast), but you can get some really good deals at low season. The best we saw was bed and breakfast for CYP26 per night with optional dinner ( choice of mountain, or seaview).

We were very fortunate because a very early booking for the beginning of January cost just £234 each for ten days.

CONTACT:
Coral Bay, P.O.Box 2422, P.C 8099, Paphos, Cyprus. Tel: +357 06 621711 (Cyprus)

They do provide brochures and tarrif cards on request.

Try it for a low season break and I do hope you can get as good a bargain as I did. If you are keen on the idea you might like to search the holidays companies on teletext or on the net for the best price. That's how we found this one. It's only a short distance from the airport and transfers costs around CYP10.

The only problem with this holiday is that the hotel may have spoiled me for staying anywhere else. I could soon get used to that lifestyle!

 

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