Crete, Greece
Greece's biggest island: pink sand at Elafonisi, the Samaria Gorge and family resorts along the Chania coast.
A sample of the properties we quote here. Tell us your dates and we shortlist the right ones for you.
Elounda, facing Spinalonga island
A terraced hillside resort of bungalows and suites stepping down to Elounda bay, looking across the water to the Spinalonga fortress island.
Elounda, on Mirabello Bay
A long-established Relais & Châteaux member on Mirabello Bay, known for its low-rise garden bungalows with private pools.
Elounda waterfront
One of the first luxury resorts built on this coast, spread along the Elounda shore in low buildings, bungalows and villas.
Private bay at Vathi, near Agios Nikolaos
A modern resort built into the cliffs of its own bay, with terraced rooms descending to a sheltered beach.
Chania old town, Venetian quarter
A suites hotel inside a seventeenth-century Venetian mansion in the lanes behind the old harbour, with a pebble-mosaic courtyard and a rooftop terrace.
Beachfront west of Rethymno
A large bungalow-style beach resort on the long sandy shore outside Rethymno, geared to families.
Gouves, east of Heraklion
A beachfront resort with Minoan-inspired architecture and a long lagoon-style pool, on the coast east of Heraklion.
Hersonissos beachfront
A large village-style resort of low white buildings on the Hersonissos shore, long popular with families.
We quote these and many more. Prices depend on dates and board — the quote is free and there is no payment on this site.
Crete is not an island in the sense that Santorini or Mykonos are islands. It is 260 kilometres long, has mountains that hold snow into May, a population that lives here year-round regardless of tourists, and four regions that function as separate destinations. Booking "Crete" is a bit like booking "the Turkish coast" — technically correct and practically useless until you narrow it down.
That scale is the single most important thing to understand before you choose a hotel. Chania in the far west and Elounda in the east are a four-hour drive apart on a road that slows down every time it meets a town. People book a hotel because the photos look right, then discover the beach they came for is 150 kilometres away.
The north coast is where almost all the hotels are: sheltered, developed, with a motorway running its length. The south coast is a different island — mountains dropping into the Libyan Sea, villages reached by one road or, in a couple of cases, only by boat. If you want quiet, it is down there. If you want a resort with a pool and a kids' club, it is not.
The prettiest base. Chania town is a Venetian harbour with a lighthouse, arched shipyards and a lattice of lanes behind it, and it is genuinely lovely to walk in the evening. The beaches west of town — Platanias, Agia Marina — carry most of the hotel stock, and the famous ones, Elafonisi and Balos, are day trips from here rather than from anywhere else.
This is the choice if you want scenery and character. It is not the cheapest, and the drive from Heraklion airport is two and a half hours, so fly into Chania.
The compromise, and often the smart one. Rethymno has its own old town — smaller and less polished than Chania but with the same Venetian bones — a long sandy beach running east from it, and a big cluster of family hotels along that strip. It sits roughly midway, so both ends of the island are reachable without the whole day disappearing.
The busiest region and the main airport. Heraklion city itself is a working Greek city rather than a resort, with a good archaeological museum and Knossos on its doorstep. The resort strip runs east through Hersonissos and Malia — Malia has a well-earned reputation for its nightlife, which is exactly what some people want and exactly what others need to avoid.
Stay here if you are short on time, if you are combining beach with the archaeology, or if you want the widest choice of large all-inclusive hotels.
The east and the expensive end. Elounda is where Crete's five-star resorts sit, several of them with private beach coves and the kind of rates that put them alongside anywhere in the Mediterranean. Agios Nikolaos next door is smaller and livelier, built around a lake that connects to the sea.
Quieter, warmer later in the season, and a long way from the western sights.
Crete is markedly cheaper than the small Cycladic islands and it has something they mostly do not: real all-inclusive stock, at scale, aimed at families. A good four-star on the north coast with half board starts around 70 EUR per person per night in May, June or October. The same hotel in August is commonly double, and the beachfront five-stars in Elounda run several times that.
Because the island is large and lived-in, eating out is reasonable away from the harbour fronts. A taverna dinner for two with a carafe of wine sits around 35 to 55 EUR, and the raki at the end usually arrives without being ordered.
Three airports: Chania (CHQ) in the west, Heraklion (HER) in the centre and by far the busiest, and Sitia (JSH) in the east for a handful of routes. Fly into the one nearest your hotel — the saving in transfer time is worth more than a slightly cheaper fare.
Ferries from Piraeus run overnight to both Chania and Heraklion, which suits anyone combining Crete with Athens.
To be clear about what we do: we quote your accommodation through our partner agencies, and any transfer on Crete is arranged locally, usually by the hotel. Our own vehicles and drivers operate in Turkey, not in Greece, and we would rather say that plainly than let it be assumed.
More often than not, yes. Crete rewards driving more than almost any Greek island, and the best beaches, gorges and mountain villages are simply not on a bus route. Buses along the north coast are frequent and cheap, so a fly-and-flop week in one resort works without one.
If you plan to see Balos, Elafonisi, the south coast or the Lasithi plateau, take the car. Note that the track to Balos is rough and most rental agreements exclude it — the boat from Kissamos is the sensible route.
May and June are excellent: the island is green, wildflowers are still out, the sea is swimmable from late May, and prices are well below peak.
July and August are hot, busy and expensive, and the meltemi can blow for days on the north coast. It makes the heat bearable but it also flattens umbrellas and rules out small boats.
September and October are the sweet spot for swimming — the sea is at its warmest and the crowds thin sharply after the first week of September. Some hotels start closing in late October.
November to April is for a different trip entirely: walking, food, empty archaeological sites, snow on the White Mountains. Many coastal hotels shut, the Samaria Gorge is closed, and swimming is over.
If you want the whitewashed-village-on-a-cliff photograph, this is the wrong island — go to Santorini and pay for it. Crete has beauty but it is bigger, rougher and more ordinary at the edges.
If you refuse to drive and want to see more than your resort, be honest about that when you choose a region, because it narrows things considerably.
And if you only have three or four nights, you will spend a good part of them in a car. Crete deserves a week, and rewards two.
Cretan cooking is a reason to come rather than a footnote. The staples are dakos, a hard barley rusk soaked in tomato and topped with soft cheese; wild greens boiled and dressed with lemon; snails, which locals eat happily and visitors mostly do not; and lamb slow-cooked with mountain herbs. The olive oil is exceptional and used with a generosity that startles people. Raki arrives at the end of the meal unbidden and refusing it is faintly rude.
Knossos deserves one honest sentence. It is the largest Bronze Age site in Greece and it is genuinely worth seeing, but a good deal of what you walk through is Arthur Evans's early-twentieth-century reconstruction in painted concrete rather than surviving Minoan fabric. Go early, go with a guide who will tell you which is which, and pair it with the archaeological museum in Heraklion, where the actual finds are kept.
The gap between a July beachfront all-inclusive and a May half-board inland is enormous here, and so is the gap between the four regions. Publishing one number on this page would mislead most of the people reading it.
Tell us your dates, how many of you, whether you want all-inclusive or somewhere to eat out from, and whether you would rather have the pretty town or the big pool. A consultant comes back within one working day with two or three properties in the right region and the honest reasoning for each. The quote is free, it commits you to nothing, and no payment is taken on this site.
Chania and the west for scenery and the famous beaches; Rethymno in the middle if you want to see both ends without long drives; Heraklion for the widest choice of large family hotels and the archaeology; Elounda in the east for five-star resorts and quiet. Tell us which of those matters most and we will narrow it for you.
If you plan to stay in one resort and use the beach in front of it, no — the north-coast buses are frequent and cheap. If you want the gorges, the south coast, the mountain villages or more than one good beach, yes. Crete is too big to see properly on public transport.
More than on most Greek islands, because the stock genuinely exists and the family hotels are built for it. That said, Cretan food is one of the reasons to come and tavernas are reasonably priced, so half board often gives better value — you get breakfast and the option to eat out without wasting a paid dinner.
The one nearest your hotel. Heraklion has the most flights but Chania is two and a half hours closer to the west. Booking a cheap flight into the wrong airport routinely costs five hours of driving across the week and more than the fare you saved.
From late May through to late October for most people, with September the warmest water of the year. In April and early May the island is beautiful and green but the sea is still cold, so that period suits walkers and sightseers rather than swimmers.
Yes, but plan them properly. Both are in the far west, both take most of a day from anywhere east of Chania, and both are crowded from late morning. Balos is best reached by boat from Kissamos — the access track is rough and most hire-car agreements exclude it.
Neither. The quote is free and commits you to nothing, and there is no checkout on this site. If you accept an offer, payment goes directly to the partner agency that operates the booking and issues your voucher, and that agency is named in the offer before you decide.
On Crete it is arranged locally, almost always by the hotel, and we make sure it is included and confirmed in the offer. Our own vehicles and drivers operate in Turkey, so we will not pretend we are driving you in Greece.
Rates here move a lot between low and high season, so we quote each request individually rather than publish a number that would be wrong most of the year.
Free, non-binding, answered by a person.
