Hotel guides / Greece
A price ladder rather than a wish list. Five stays that earn their rate, arranged by what they actually cost, from a modernist bolthole in Thessaloniki to twelve suites on Santorini’s black sand.
Greece has a talent for making you feel wealthier than you are. A late lunch that costs less than a sandwich at Gatwick. A ferry crossing that feels like a private charter because you booked the Tuesday. And, if you choose carefully, a hotel that punches so far above its rate that you find yourself checking the confirmation email twice.
That last part is the difficult one. The Greek hotel market has split into two poles: the mass resort, and the caldera suite with a private plunge pool and a price to match. What survives in the middle is the good stuff, and it is genuinely findable if you know which islands to skip and which mainland corners nobody talks about.
So this is not a list of the best hotels in Greece. It is a ladder. Five stays, ordered by what they cost, each chosen because the design, the setting or the story is worth more than the money changing hands. Start at the bottom rung and work up until your budget taps you on the shoulder.
The ladder, low season starting rates
The Modernist
Thessaloniki, Central Macedonia
See inside The Modernist
Thessaloniki is the correct answer to a question most people do not think to ask. It has the food, the Byzantine layers and the seafront promenade, and it costs a fraction of what the islands do. The Modernist is its best argument.
The building is a 1920s heritage block, restored in a pared back style that moves between art deco, mid century and Scandinavian design. Rooms are small by design, 15 to 17 square metres at the entry level, with tall windows, pale parquet, made to measure furniture and a Marshall speaker sitting where a minibar tax would normally be. Breakfast is served on the rooftop terrace and made in an open kitchen from locally sourced ingredients. The books on the shelves come from a shop nearby. The bath products were made by a local chemist.
This is the trick the whole list depends on. The Modernist cuts everything superfluous and spends the savings on the things you actually touch. It currently sits at the top of Tripadvisor’s Thessaloniki ranking, ahead of hotels charging three times as much.
Dexamenes Seaside Hotel
Kourouta Beach, western Peloponnese
See inside Dexamenes
You sleep inside a wine tank. That is the headline and it is entirely literal.
Dexamenes is a 1920s winery on Kourouta Beach, abandoned and then reimagined by K Studio, who kept the industrial bones and simply let light into them. The concrete tanks that once held wine are now 30 square metre suites, minimally finished, each with a private canopied patio opening straight onto the sand. Floors that used to be walls. Handrails made from reclaimed water pipes. The stepping stones across the courtyard pools were previously tank walls.
What stops it from being a design school exercise is that it still behaves like a hotel from this part of Greece. Rates include a daily Greek breakfast. There is a cellar of around a hundred bottles, a taverna, an art gallery, and a small shop selling ceramics and jewellery made locally. Ancient Olympia is a 45 minute drive.
Be clear eyed about the location. This is the working western Peloponnese, not a manicured resort strip, and you will need a car. Kalamata airport is just under two hours away, Athens about three and a half.
Kinsterna Hotel
Agios Stefanos, near Monemvasia
See inside Kinsterna
Kinsterna is the reason to point the car further down the Peloponnese. A Byzantine era mansion with Ottoman and Venetian layers, restored across 25 acres of olive groves, vineyards and citrus trees, with the castle rock of Monemvasia in the middle distance.
The estate is close to self sufficient. It makes its own wine, olive oil, tsipouro, bread, marmalade and soap, and much of that lands on the table at breakfast. A freshwater spring rises from the basement of the mansion and eventually becomes a long, river like swimming pool. Rooms are individually designed inside the original stonework, so no two are the same.
It was awarded two Michelin Keys in the inaugural Greek selection, one of only seven hotels in the country to receive the honour. It still opens at around €180 in the quieter months, which is the sort of arithmetic that makes this list worth writing. Note that rates climb steeply in high summer, and that you need a car.
Aristide Hotel
Ermoupoli, Syros, Cyclades
See inside Aristide
Syros is the capital of the Cyclades and almost nobody goes there, which is the whole point. Ermoupoli is a proper working port town of pastel neoclassical mansions, marble squares and blue domed churches, twenty five minutes by ferry from Mykonos and about a hundred years away in temperament.
Aristide is a former shipowner’s palazzo, one of the last neoclassical houses built in Greece, rescued from dereliction by the author and economist Oana Aristide and her sister Jasmin. There are nine suites, an art gallery, an artists’ residency, a garden bar and a rooftop bar with the Aegean laid out in front of it. Nine types of Greek marble run through the interiors. Almost all the suites have five metre ceilings, and many have private plunge pools or freestanding stone baths.
The sustainability is not decorative either. Water arrives in carafes rather than plastic, the furniture was made by carpenters on the island, the upholstery was done locally, and the hotel offsets part of your carbon footprint through a tree planting scheme. Breakfast is organic, grown partly on site, and served in the courtyard garden. It is over fifteens only.
Istoria
Perivolos, Santorini
See inside Istoria
If you are going to break the budget, break it properly and break it away from Oia.
Istoria has twelve suites on the black volcanic sand of Perivolos, on Santorini’s eastern coast, well clear of the caldera scrum. The design leans on terracotta, natural wood and classical touches, with big arched openings that pull you out onto private terraces. Most suites have an outdoor hot tub or a private pool. The main pool is finished in a green artisanal tile with a sunken pool bar, and it is the thing guests write home about.
Mr E, the restaurant, works Santorini’s produce hard under chef Rafail Tsakiris, and breakfast is a la carte rather than a buffet, which after a fortnight of Greek hotels feels like a small act of civilisation. A second property, Istoria Cliff, sits thirty minutes away in Firostefani if you want the volcano view, with a shuttle running between the two.
Twelve suites means twelve rooms’ worth of attention. That is what the money is buying, not the postcode.
How to actually do this cheaply
- Move the date, not the hotel Every property on this ladder swings by a factor of two or three between March and August. Kinsterna is cheapest in March and April. The Modernist bottoms out in November. Shoulder season is not a compromise, it is the whole strategy.
- Go mainland for the first half The Peloponnese and Thessaloniki give you Greece at roughly half the island rate. Bank the savings there and spend them on three nights of something extravagant at the end.
- Book direct Small properties like Aristide and Istoria run nine to twelve rooms. Emailing them tends to produce better rates, and better rooms, than a booking engine will.
- Pick the unfashionable island Syros, Sifnos, Naxos and Milos deliver the Cycladic architecture, the food and the light, at a discount that exists purely because the ferry from Mykonos is twenty five minutes long and most people never take it.
- Count what is included Dexamenes and Kinsterna both fold a proper Greek breakfast into the rate. Over a week that is real money, and it is usually the best meal of the day.
The common thread across all five is that none of them is trying to sell you a fantasy of Greece. They are old wineries, old mansions, old port houses, restored by people who cared enough to keep the walls. That tends to be the better value proposition anyway, and it is a more interesting way to slow a trip down.
Rates quoted are low season starting prices and were accurate at the time of writing. They will move. Always confirm directly with the property.