My wife and I spent eight nights in Crete recently, five at Domes Noruz Chania (see my review here), followed by three nights at the JW Marriott Crete Resort & Spa.
This is a relatively new JW Marriott property as it opened in June 2025. Having never stayed at a JW Marriott before, I was curious what the experience would be like, especially with it being so new.
I was also hopeful that we’d be able to get a decent room upgrade as I applied three Nightly Upgrade Awards after booking (you can pick these as a Choice benefit after earning 50 and/or 75 elite night credits in a calendar year). I know many people struggle to use these, but with us visiting in the shoulder season, I had my fingers crossed that they’d come through.
They did.
Here’s my full review of the JW Marriott Crete Resort & Spa.
Upgrade before arrival
If you’re not familiar with how Marriott’s Nightly Upgrade Awards work, you can apply them to your reservation any time from the time of booking up to 2pm the day before your check-in date, but they don’t start checking for upgrade availability until five days before arrival for most brands (three days before for the St Regis, Ritz-Carlton, and EDITION brands).
When applying your Nightly Upgrade Awards, you’ll be given a list of rooms to which you can possibly upgrade. You can select as many or as few as you like. Selecting many could be a good option as it increases the likelihood that you’ll get some kind of upgrade. However, selecting only a few higher upgraded room types might give you a better result in terms of the quality of the room you get. It’ll differ from property to property, so there’s no one correct approach.
We were originally booked into a ‘Deluxe Guest room, 1 King, Sea view, Balcony, Whirlpool’ room which itself looked beautiful. When selecting potential upgraded room types, I only selected options where we’d have a one bedroom suite, rather than going for any Deluxe and/or Junior Suite options.
Five days before our stay, I received an email stating “Your Award Upgrade Is Confirmed”. This confirmed that we’d been upgraded to an ‘Executive Suite, 1 King, Sofa bed, Sea view, Private pool, Terrace.’ From what I can remember, that was the lowest room category I’d selected as a possible use for our Nightly Upgrade Awards. I was very pleased with the outcome though as the photos online made that room type look amazing.
Check-in
After checking out of Domes Noruz Chania, Shae and I drove downtown to explore the Old Venetian Port of Chania for a few hours before heading on to the JW Marriott, arriving at about 4:15pm.
We were greeted at our rental car by a friendly bellhop who took all our bags while we went inside to check-in. They took our passports and a credit card for incidentals (we’d booked this as an award stay) at the front desk, then invited us to take a seat at one of the numerous comfortable seats in the lobby.
While waiting for them to finish processing our check-in, they brought us a refreshing drink to enjoy. I’m not sure if it’s a JW Marriott brand standard thing, but our drink and all the hotel’s signature cocktails contained herbs from the hotel’s garden.
We were given a couple of things after they’d checked us in. One was a map of the resort which was particularly helpful in working out where the different restaurants were.
Another sheet we were given detailed the opening times for the restaurants and bars on site, along with various other amenities.
On the reverse side was a QR code which provided a link to download an app called Exclusivi. After entering the secret code listed below (which I guess is now no longer secret), it displayed information about the restaurants and their menus, as well as details about other amenities, on-site and off-site activities you can book, and more.
With regards to the restaurant side of things, this was helpful as it provides an ability to book a table for dinner at the hotel’s different restaurants rather than having to call the front desk to make a reservation. However, don’t get too attached to what’s listed on the menus in the app as those didn’t seem to match the menus in the restaurants themselves, so that was less helpful. Perhaps the app is displaying the previous year’s menus (the hotel is open seasonally from April to October each year).
To take us to our room, the front desk agent drove us up in a golf cart, with our bags following a few minutes later.
The JW Marriott Crete Resort & Spa is built on a hill. That helps ensure most rooms get a great view of the Mediterranean Sea (or maybe the Sea of Crete?) no matter where your room is located. That does mean though that the better view that you have, the further you have to walk up and down. You can probably ask for them to drive you around the resort in a golf cart, but there’s also an elevator that can take you up one of the steepest parts of the resort.
The design of the resort is beautiful. While some of the garden areas need more time to bed in seeing as it’s still a relatively new property, I loved the layout. At nighttime, it was lit well enough to find your way around with no issues, but with soft lighting so as not to spoil the ambience.
Executive Suite
As mentioned earlier, by utilizing Nightly Upgrade Awards we were upgraded to an Executive Suite (room 4003). Before sharing a bunch of photos, here’s a walkthrough video that will help give a better sense of the layout.
When entering the suite, the living room was straight ahead. There were a couple of steps down into the living area, something I forgot one night when grabbing something from my laptop bag there.
There was a couch which was presumably also the sofa bed listed in the full room type name, along with another chair and coffee table.
Off to the side was a seating bench with a wall-mounted TV above it. We didn’t end up watching TV during our stay, so I’m not sure if it was mounted in an askew manner, or if it can be pulled out at an angle and so that’s why it looked a little haphazard.
Behind the main couch was a mini bar that featured a mini fridge with some soft drinks, as well as a tea and coffee station.
When staying at the Domes Noruz Chania, they didn’t provide any milk in the room for tea. I therefore preemptively grabbed some from the store on our way to the JW Marriott. I’m glad I did as they only had a couple of little coffee creamer pods rather than actual milk.
The bedroom featured a comfortable king bed and nice pillows. The fan above the bed was useful in theory, but less so in reality. It only seemed to have one speed setting of ‘Very Fast’; we’d like to have used it at a slower speed, but it made it too chilly having it spinning at full blast.
Behind the bed was a large double closet.
In one side was a luggage rack, safe, and some beach towels…
…while in the other there was an iron, ironing board, some slippers, and a bathrobe (a second bathrobe was hanging up in the bathroom).
Opposite the closet—so outside of the bathroom itself—was a long double sink area.
The bathroom itself was in its own room and was, in effect, a wet room as the rainfall shower flowed down into the middle of the room, with a bathtub off to the side. The water pressure from the rainfall shower was good, as was the handheld shower wand.
Our executive suite had two separate restrooms. The one to the right of the suite entrance (so by the living room) had its own sink.
Meanwhile, the restroom on the other side of the living room (so behind the bedroom) didn’t have its own sink, but it was right next to the bathroom sinks.
One of the best parts of the suite was what was outside. There was a terrace with a good-sized plunge pool on one side. Shading overhead helped provide some protection from the sun, but it was too early in the season to enjoy the pool as the water was a bit too chilly.
On the other side of the terrace were a couple of loungers, as well as a table and chairs. While there was a privacy partition on the pool side, there wasn’t much privacy on the other side.
As you can see in the photo below, the view from our terrace was stellar.
I’m not always a fan of the design and decor of rooms at some luxury hotels, but overall I loved our Executive Suite at the JW Marriott Crete Resort & Spa. One somewhat quibble is that even though it’s a one bedroom suite, there’s not true privacy inside. There are doors that can slide across between the bedroom and living room, but they have opaque panes. The back of the bedroom also opens out to the bathroom sink area on both sides, so if there’s light on anywhere in the suite, someone sleeping in the bedroom will get disturbed. I’m usually up at night much later than my wife, so that can make it trickier to get work done in the room. The light switches for the restrooms were outside of them, so you can’t even close the restroom door and turn the light on at night; you’re stuck lighting up the suite for a few seconds unless you use the flashlight on your cellphone.
Shortly after having our bags brought to our room, another staff member stopped by to drop off a welcome amenity (presumably due to my Lifetime Platinum status with Marriott Bonvoy). There was a bottle of Drappier champagne, some chocolates and truffles, as well as some other kind of sweet treat that seemed to be a chocolate shell with something like fruit compote inside.
Turndown service was provided in the evenings, although it didn’t seem very well organized. We received it the first night, but missed out on our final two nights as they came by late afternoon or early evening and we had our Do Not Disturb sign on at the time. I was a little surprised that they didn’t arrange for it to be done while we were at dinner seeing as we’d made dinner reservations. It’s not like it’s a big deal though; perhaps I just had unrealistic expectations as we don’t often stay at hotels that offer turndown service.
Breakfast
Breakfast is offered in Fayi restaurant every morning from 7am-11am. There’s both indoor and outdoor seating; we ate outdoors for a couple of mornings, but the weather wasn’t great on our final morning, so we chose to eat inside that day.
It’s a buffet breakfast that has a good selection of food. There are many hot items including scrambled and fried eggs, bacon, sausage, fried mushrooms, etc., as well as an omelet station.
There are also cold cuts, cereals, breads, pastries, cakes, salad, fruit, and lots more. I took quite a few photos of the buffet setup, but apparently forgot to take photos of the hot food station and one or two other areas.
You order drinks from the servers, but this is where we found the breakfast service to be extremely lacking for a couple of reasons.
On the hot drinks front, it might be fine if you just want a coffee. I asked for English breakfast tea and on two of the three mornings they took my order, but simply didn’t bring any tea. Both those first two mornings we had to follow up with them after about 15 minutes, by which point we’d already mostly finished breakfast.
Seeing as it was a JW Marriott, I figured they’d provide a teapot with a teabag or tea leaves already steeping inside. Instead, they provided a tea cup filled about 3/4 of the way with water that’s reasonably hot (but not boiling), with a couple of teabags on the side.
On the third morning my tea arrived without me having to follow up (albeit about 10 minutes after ordering it). On none of the three mornings did they provide milk, despite asking for it. There is milk inside at the buffet and so I was able to grab it for myself, but it wasn’t what I was expecting of a $500+ per night hotel.
It’s also not a great setup with water at breakfast. They provide water initially if you ask, but they only fill your not-huge glass about 1/4 of the way. That would be fine if they left a carafe of water on your table to refill it yourself or if they regularly come round to top you up, but they don’t—at least not at our table on any of the three mornings we were there anyway. We therefore had to get the attention of a server each morning to ask for more water as there wasn’t even a self-serve option at the buffet where we could take care of it ourselves.
Other restaurants & bars
The JW Marriott Crete Resort & Spa has several dining and drinking establishments.
When checking in, we received a sheet with the opening hours for the restaurants and bars. Dining information was also available in the Exclusivi app (see the QR code earlier in the post—you can view the menus in there too, although those menus didn’t actually match the menus in the restaurants), as well as on the back of the resort map that we were given at check-in. In-room dining is also available 24/7.
We had an opportunity to eat and drink at all of these, with the exception of EN KAMÍNO.
Anóee
On our first night at the resort we ate at Anóee, a restaurant with Cretan food. It’s open for lunch from 1pm-5pm and dinner from 7pm-11pm, and is closed on Mondays.
As with all the restaurants at the JW Marriott Crete, the setting and views were quite lovely.
Starters were tapas-style servings. Shae and I shared the potato salad, marinated gavros (anchovies), and tzatziki; bread was provided with the tzatziki (not pictured below).
For our entrées, I ordered the lamb chops that were served with pita bread and vegetables, while Shae got the rooster wood oven baked that was served with skioufihta pasta, shallots, and aged anthotyro cheese. I also ordered some fries on the side, but those probably weren’t necessary with all the pita I had on my plate.
All of the food was delicious and I think this was my favorite of the three dinners we had at the resort.
Cuccagna
On our second night we ate at Cuccagna, their Italian restaurant. It’s open for dinner only from 6pm-11pm, with it being closed on Tuesdays.
There’s a limited amount of outdoor seating, with additional seating available inside where the Fayi breakfast restaurant is. It was a bit of a cooler night that night, so we chose to eat inside.
We started off with some thin breadstick-type things, then got their focaccia. From the Secondi part of the menu I ordered the branzino as my main which came with tri-color bell pepper purée, while Shae ordered their risotto con funghi.
My branzino was excellent and I’d have happily eaten several plates of it. Shae’s mushroom risotto on the other hand wasn’t great. She thought it was fairly bland; I tried it too and agreed, so maybe give that dish a miss if you visit.
Onalos
On our final night we ate at Onalos, the resort’s seafood restaurant. Onalos is open for dinner only from 6pm-11pm, with the exception of Wednesdays when it’s closed.
It was another cooler night, but we were able to be seated next to an outdoor heater and so got to enjoy the evening views.
The meal started with some bread and olive oil for dipping (not pictured below). For an appetizer, Shae ordered the mussels that came in fresh tomato sauce, parsley, and garlic confit. I tried a couple and it was very tasty.
For my appetizer I ordered the sea bass tataki which came with fricasee cream, lettuce, echalot, dill, and chilli. I don’t think I’d ever had tataki-prepared fish before (it has a quick sear on high heat on the outside, with the inside being raw), but I enjoyed it and would happily have it again.
For my main, I ordered the grilled grouper which came with “Kakavia” sauce, celeriac, potato, carrot, fennel, and celery oil. This was very nice, although it felt like the sauce-to-fish ratio was a little excessive.
Shae ordered some kind of sushi; I didn’t get a photo of that page of the menu and it’s not listed in the Onalos menu in the Exclusivi app, so I’m not sure of its full description. Rest assured though that she loved it and it was her favorite meal of our stay; I tried a little and agreed that it was delicious.
Suncti
Suncti is the resort’s poolside bar. It’s open every day of the week from 11am-6pm for drinks, with lunch also being available from 12pm-6pm.
After enjoying a swim in the heated adults-only swimming pool one afternoon, we stopped by the bar afterwards to have a quick cocktail.
Eexis
Eexis is a mostly-indoor bar, although it does have some outside seating. It’s open from 11am-11:30pm. We stopped by there for a quick drink on our final afternoon and weren’t overly impressed with the service. The pina colada I ordered also wasn’t as good as the one I’d had the previous day at Suncti.
Amenities
JW Marriott Crete “beach”
Due to the nature of its location on a rocky part of the coast, the resort doesn’t have a beach which will be disappointing for some.
That said, the hotel has done a good job out of a bad beach situation. They’ve installed a long deck along the sea with loads of shaded cabanas. This at least means you can relax like you’re on a beach with excellent views.
Although it’s not a traditional beach, you can get down into the water for a swim if you like by virtue of some steps down into the sea. It was too cold for us to want to go swimming due to when we visited, but I imagine this would be a lovely option in the summer.
Be careful in bad weather though; the wind picked up the last couple of days there and waves were crashing against the rocks, plus it looked like there were some semi-strong currents further out on those days.
If you would like a beach experience though, you don’t have far to go. Just a few minutes walk away is a small beach area; you’ll pass it as you drive up to the resort.
Outdoor swimming pools
The JW Marriott Crete Resort & Spa has three outdoor swimming pools. If you’re looking out at the sea, the family pool is on the right and is heated to a nice temperature.
In the middle was a shallower children’s swimming pool. This one wasn’t heated and at the end there was a shaded area to help protect kids from the sun.
Then on the left there was an adults-only swimming pool that was heated nicely too.
Despite the weather not being great one afternoon, we went for a swim in the adults-only pool and had a lovely time. When staying at the Domes Noruz Chania the previous week, I’d not gone swimming as their pool wasn’t heated and it was chilly seeing as we were visiting in late April.
There were lots of loungers and cabanas around the pools, along with some beanbags.
There’s a QR code you can scan to order drinks from the bar and have them delivered to you. These can also be found on the cabanas along the “beach.”
Anoseas Spa
The resort’s spa is called Anoseas and is open each day from 9am-7pm, with the ability to book treatments from 10am-7pm.
We were going to give the spa a miss as we weren’t looking to have any treatments. However, we got chatting to another guest who shared that the spa area has an indoor swimming pool, sauna, and steam room that guests can access for free.
We were glad that we discovered that because we weren’t informed of this when checking in, the sheet we were given with hotel details didn’t mention it, nor did the Exclusivi app mention it in the spa section. On our final morning at the hotel, we chatted to some guests who’d checked in the previous night. We let them know about the spa situation and they said they’d not been informed about it either.
Having learned about these facilities, we decided to check it out after swimming in the outdoor pool. There are changing rooms available, along with lockers you can utilize if needed.
When entering the indoor pool area, there was a refreshments area with some small snacks.
The pool was an OK size for floating around in, but not for doing laps (the outdoor pools are good for that though).
There are a couple of massage jets you can turn on; one for your back and one for your neck.
There’s also a sauna and a steam room.
Fitness room
The hotel’s fitness room is a decent size and is well-equipped with various pieces of cardio equipment and weights. There’s also a larger empty room for doing things like yoga.
As would be expected, there’s a water dispenser. If you need a little snack during your stay, there’s a fruit bowl too.
Kids club
The JW Marriott Crete Resort & Spa has a number of childcare options. There’s a creche available at an extra charge for young children from 4 months to 3 years old.
For children ages 4-12 there’s a kids club. The morning sessions run 10am-1pm, the lunch club is from 1pm-3pm, and the afternoon session is available from 3pm-6pm.
A babysitting service is also available upon request from Monday to Saturday from 6:30pm-11pm.
Parking
Valet parking is complimentary.
If you call down to have your car brought to the front, be aware that the valet will leave the key in the ignition. We hadn’t realized that when picking up our car and the valet had disappeared, so we were waiting around for a while in order for him to return so we could get our car key from him, only to learn that it had been left in the car all along. I know it’s a JW Marriott and so no one there was likely to steal our cheapie Kia Picanto rental, but it didn’t seem like the best security setup.
Pet policy
The JW Marriott Crete is a pet-friendly hotel. You’re allowed one dog per room, with a maximum weight of 8kg (~17.5lbs). There’s a €100 (~$118) pet fee per stay, rather than per night.
Cash price
For our dates in late April/early May, our originally booked ‘Deluxe Guest room, 1 King, Sea view, Balcony, Whirlpool’ would’ve cost ~$500 per night. The Executive Suite that we were upgraded to using the Nightly Upgrade Awards was running at ~$1,000 for our dates.
As would be expected, prices are higher during the summer.
Points price
We booked our stay using Marriott Bonvoy points. The first night cost 61,600 points, while the second and third nights each cost 62,400 points. In the summer, you’ll generally be looking at a cost of 85,000-115,000 points per night.
If you’re booking a longer stay, remember that Marriott has a ‘Stay 5 nights, Pay for 4’ feature on award stays which reduces the cost of stays booked with points.
Points value
For our dates, we got ~0.8 cents per point (cpp) of value which is marginally higher than our Reasonable Redemption Value for Marriott points.
Resort fee
There wasn’t a resort fee, but there was a €15 (~$17.50) per night Climate Resilience Tax that was payable, even on an award stay.
Internet
This seemed to be very good. I had some work to do while we were there and had no issues with connectivity. Streaming videos, etc. on our phones wasn’t an issue either.
Club lounge
There isn’t one.
Elite benefits
We received a great upgrade to an Executive Suite, although that was by redeeming three of my Nightly Upgrade Awards. I’m not sure how generous they are with elite upgrades at check-in.
Having Lifetime Platinum status meant that our welcome gift choice should’ve been free breakfast for me and Shae, or 1,000 points. We weren’t asked about our preference at check-in, but it seems like they selected free breakfast as we weren’t charged for that. The stay hasn’t shown up in my Marriott Bonvoy account activity yet, so I don’t know if I’ll also get the 1,000 bonus points.
In theory, the fact that they didn’t ask which welcome gift choice we wanted meant we should’ve gotten $100 compensation due to Marriott’s Elite Member Benefits Guarantee. Ultimately though, we did get free breakfast which is what we wanted, so I didn’t care.
In addition to that official welcome amenity, we were provided with a bottle of champagne and some sweet treats.
Seeing as this is a resort property, 4pm late checkout isn’t guaranteed for those with Platinum status or higher. They did ask if we wanted a late checkout though. It’s normally 11am and we extended it until 11:30am; we didn’t need it later than that due to our flight back to the UK that afternoon.
Checkout / Marriott gift card issues
Before our stay, I’d emailed the hotel asking if we could pay for room charges with Marriott gift cards as I’d redeemed for some from my Capital One Shopping cashback balance, but they never bothered replying. We therefore checked once we were at the hotel and they confirmed we could.
However, this was a whooooooole palaver when checking out. The regular front desk agents don’t have authority to process Marriott gift card redemptions, so they have to call a manager to authorize it (this was the same at Domes Noruz Chania). The manager took ages to process the first gift card, then had issues with the second card. It sounds like they entered the Euro amount for the redemption rather than the US dollar amount which meant the second gift card was overcharged.
The thing is, we didn’t know what was going on at the time other than that it was taking forever. They eventually had us take a seat in the lobby area while they worked on it. Time went on, and on, and on. I went back to the front desk to check on their progress and they said it should just be a few more minutes. Ten minutes later they still weren’t done and we had to get to the airport, so I went back to the front desk again to ask for my phone back (I’d left it with them as they needed the gift card number; I’m not sure why they didn’t just note it down and return my phone).
As it turns out, they didn’t need us there anymore but they hadn’t bothered to let us know, so we’d just been waiting around needlessly. In the end, the second gift card was overcharged and they couldn’t process a refund on to it, but they advised they’d refund my credit card with the overcharge instead. That refund hasn’t been received yet (we checked out a week ago, so I have a reminder set up to follow up with them in a few days).
That whole checkout situation took 45 minutes which was ridiculous; we arrived at the front desk at 11:30am and didn’t get to leave until 12:15pm. Ultimately, they should’ve taken the details of the two gift cards we wanted to redeem and let us get on our way, rather than making us sit around for three-quarters of an hour and wait for them to fix the mistake they made, especially seeing as we didn’t need to be there for that.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Views – From what I could tell, pretty much every room/suite at the property has very good views of the sea.
- Decor – Our one bedroom executive suite was decorated very nicely and the resort grounds overall were beautiful.
- Pools – We appreciated that both of the outdoor non-children’s pools were heated.
- Food – Other than Shae’s mushroom risotto, we enjoyed all our meals.
Cons
- Service – While pretty much everyone was friendly, the service wasn’t of a caliber that I’d expect from a JW Marriott. From them ignoring my email before our stay, to not being asked which elite member welcome amenity we wanted at check-in, to forgotten drinks orders at breakfast, to them seemingly not bothering to advise guests about the complimentary facilities in the spa, to a very poor checkout experience, I was disappointed overall with the service we received.
- Conflicting food menus – The app for the hotel lists food menus for each restaurant, but none of them matched what was available in the restaurants.
- Non-enclosed bedroom – The setup of our one bedroom suite meant the bedroom area wasn’t enclosed, so any light anywhere in the suite meant the bedroom also got lit up at night.
- Beach – If you’re after a beach vacation in Crete with actual sand at the hotel, this isn’t the property for you.
- Landscaping – Due to the property only being a year old, there are lots of bare patches of rocky ground around the property, exposed irrigation systems, etc. that’ll presumably not be seen once plants and shrubs have grown more.
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The property looks great, and the food looks amazing! Too bad about the service issues and other minor lapses you experienced while there.