Loucas Hotel: Bad Reviews (2)

So I am continuing with the bad reviews:

thereviewerBrisbane (10/08/07) wrote:

Do not stay at Hotel Lucas you will waste your money and be very disappointed.Rooms are horrible especially for the money. Donkey droppings outside room. You have to share a common balcony. .The only good thing about this hotel is the poor bell boys that carry the suitcases up and down the stairs.
There are so many other fabulous hotels don't waste your money.
Pick something else and enjoy the beauty that santorini has to offer.

Not very informative. Basically this person disliked everything. I think he basically had a problem with the money chargedbut these are things he already knew when he made his reservation. Also I might add that this particular reviewer has made only one review and it's the one above.

Time4travelling (28/10/06) wrote:

We had 2 rooms both of which were filthy with a smell that was horrible. Although staff said it wasn't a sewage odor we totally disagreed with them. The beds were as hard as rock. They were using boxsprings as a mattress. The sheets and towels were thread bare and grey. The bathroom sink was dirty and had rust and corrosion on the chrome drains and taps. The lighting was terrible and the air conditioning was absolutely useless. The pool looks pretty but the deck lacked space and had ten chairs maximum, we had to share one between the four of us. The extremely loud music from the bar directly above the hotel played until 2:30am. The 'free' breakfast reflected everything about the hotel, it was tasteless. We could not stay another night in this horrible hotel so we packed up checked out. This was not an easy task. We have never been given a harder time and had less curtesy than we did that day. They unsuccessfully tried to make us pay for 3 nights. We paid for the 1 night we were there and left. Bottom line, no not, I repeat, do not stay at the Loucas Hotel on Santorini you will be disappointed.

Arrrrgh the smell again ... Ok here is the deal. The rooms are build in the rock. It's very traditional and Santorinian. It's very nice during the summer because traditional cave houses are naturally cool. Usually at night (unless you happen to be around a heat wave in August) you don't even need to use the air - condition. However at other times like say October and other winter months the rooms could smell a little bit mouldy. Especially because they cannot exactly be aired properly (cave houses remember). Another thing you don't realise is that according to Greek law, when guests are departuring prior to agreed departure the hotel is allowed to charge 50% of the overnights that were not used. So if you had a booking for 4 nights and stayed only one you would have to pay 2 & 1/2. You could then contest that at a court of law but you would lose. The law is pretty straight forward. You could have asked to move rooms but I would say you were absolutely determined to leave the place so you didn't give it a chance from the start.

angtort (14/08/06) wrote:

The hotel has a great view......and that's where it ends. The rooms are AWFUL (we had room #35 or #37, I forget). The furniture is very old and the rooms themselves are very dirty (we had ants in our bathroom and it was never taken care of, even though we told them several times). The pool area is small with not many seats. This hotel needs a major renovation. Plus you have to climb A TON of stairs to get too & from your room. For the price, there are many other places to stay. I would NOT recommend this hotel to anyone.

I heard a lot about the hotel being dirty in 2006. It probably has something to do with the staff working there at the time. I can assure you that they are no longer with us. Also this hotel happens to be one of the oldest in the island. It started operating around the 70's. It is constantly renovated but not always to the fullest. The pool is standart sized for Santorini. As you probably realise there is not enought space to build Olympic sized pools on the cliff! It does have an outdoor jacuzzi that nobody seems to have noticed! Oh and yes there are a lot of stairs in Santorini. It's a cliffside for god's sake.

ijfishe (01/04/06) wrote:

Only good thing about this place was the view. Time of the year did not help for us. We were there in mid April. No pool or bar as advertised in the broshures. We had to go up the road to use the facilities of the Aressana Hotel, which is far superior and cheaper.
The staff at the Loucas were so unhelpful to us in every way possible. No TV in the room, doors that would not close, safe not bolted down and electrical wires hanging out of the wall. Don't get me wrong Santorini was a magnificent place but view it from a different Hotel to the one we stayed in.

The impact of this hotel to people is amazing. Reviewers that have never reviewed anything before or after their stay for that matter feel the need to vent at a regular bases. Wow! Here is another tip: the best time to visit Santorini is around May/Early July and September. The other times it's either too crowded or not croweded enought (i.e. most sores & restaurants are closed).

A TripAdvisorMember (11/10/03) wrote:

We just arrived home (10/11/03) from Santorini after a 5-day stay. The people at Loucas can conveniently forget the English language and therefore cannot respond to your request - and tell you to ask for Kelly (who only works during the day). Our room was a cramped 11'x11' with barely room to move around a double bed (Room 35) located 105 steep outside steps down the cliff. As stated before by others at this website, the bathtub is half the size of a normal tub and you have to turn on a hot water heater in your room to experience hot water. Now the electric power is only available by placing your room key in a slot so the power turns off when you leave your room including the hot water. We experienced a wind storm so severe (10/8) that we feared being blown off the cliff and we were pummeled by volcanic ash all over our bed and room even though the outside shutters over the window was closed and locked. We called the office in the middle of the night to see if we could ride out the storm in the office only to be told that "me no speak language, call back few hours" and the phone was hung up.
We were with a tour group and so were forced to endure this place for 5 days. We all agreed if we ever got back on the mainland, Santorini and the Loucas were off our travel list forever.

I am very sorry for your trouble. I can assure you that this kind of incidents no longer happen to our hotel as the staff has changed since then. English is a must for the reception/bar/restaurant area. The hotel does not have a central heating system (boiler) because it cannot be installed due to the location and lack of space. The system of individual heating systems is very common along the cliffside hotels and the fact that hot water is not available when the key is not placed in the proper slot (i.e. when guests are not in the room) is not usually a problem but it saves energy and power. That way the cost of running the place is slightly less and it's more eco-friendly.