Merit Royal Premium Hotel Casino & Spa: Роскошный отдых у моря с азартом и спа на Кипре

I found it incredibly difficult to find out basic information before our trip to Merit Royal and so I’ll share my experience and tips here.

We stayed at the Merit Royal Premium Hotel as a young family with a baby. I would highly recommend the hotel to families. It’s extremely child friendly, has an excellent babysitting service at about €8 per hour, and the amenities are fantastic. The staff are incredibly baby friendly and really welcoming across the board.

The Merit Royal Premium is effectively connected to the Merit Royal by a 50 meter walkway. Both hotels are based on the coastline and have excellent views of the sea. The facilities are second to none — the gym at the Royal was excellent and had everything you might need. The Royal Diamond is a 2 minute walk with an equally good and more modern gym. This hotel had only opened during our stay and was beautiful, although lacked some atmosphere. Restaurants advertised were also not yet open which was frustrating. The spa located in the Merit Royal was fantastic. My wife and I both got a 50 minute message costing €60 each and was excellent value.

What’s hard to understand by viewing their website is that all of these hotels — Royal Premium, Royal, Diamond and Crystal Cove are all connected and within a 5 minute walk from each other. There are constant trams that pick up and drop off at each hotel along the way — although we usually chose to walk. The all-inclusive service more or less extends to all hotels. When you visit Crystal Cove you can use all their facilities without being asked for any hotel/room details. Food and drinks are served at each pool during the day and are included as part of the package.

There are a bunch of «A la carte» options which are extra to the all-inclusive tag. The food quality was very good and these restaurants are certainly a step up from the buffet — although this too was excellent. Restaurants range from about €40 — 80 for a dinner for 2 but included a bottle of wine and many courses. I’d highly recommend the Italian in the Merit Royal.

Now to some negatives, the staff, although lovely, don’t seem to speak to each other or understand basic information about their sister hotels. For instance, they will not book a restaurant for you but will connect you by phone. The quality of these calls is terrible and it’s very hard for an English speaker to understand that everything has been picked up correctly. I’d really recommend the hotel help their guests with this process. Simple things like finding out if a restaurant was open proved difficult. There are certainly subtle cultural differences between this hotel and a European hotel.

Another example of this, we asked about a simple transfer to another Merit hotel nearby but not directly connected. There was mass confusion over whether this service ran and from where. We were told that there was a steak restaurant in the Merit Park and when we got there it was a Turkish lamb-only restaurant. This again was lost in translation.

Another bugbear was the lifts at Merit Royal Premium. They are incredibly slow and it would often take 10 minutes to make a short trip as a result. There are only 2x lifts but one ONLY goes to the casino which is infuriating in a family-friendly hotel. Change this.

The positives — the rooms at the Merit Royal Premium were fantastic. We were on the 6th floor with an incredible view of the sea. It was spacious and the staff were helpful with a cot placed in the room for our baby. The in-room entertainment was also excellent.

The buffet was also great with tons of choices. The staff here were particularly nice.

Overall, I would highly recommend the hotel. Its facilities and food are 5 star and you get so much more value for money, although the location is very difficult to get to.