Crete is the big one — Greece's largest island, and far too varied to sum up in a single resort. It is really three or four holidays stitched together: the busy, buzzy north coast around the resorts of Hersonissos and Malia; the Venetian old towns of Chania and Rethymno further west; and the quieter, wilder corners towards the Lasithi mountains and the south. Most UK visitors fly into Heraklion, the island's capital and main airport, and are on a sunbed within the hour. If you want one Greek island that can be a family aquapark week, a couples' bolthole and a culture-and-walking trip all at once, Crete is the answer.
Every Crete package we sell carries full ATOL financial protection under licence #11211, and your ATOL Certificate lands the moment you book — you can read exactly how your ATOL financial protection works before you part with a penny. Every hotel on this page has been hand-picked and inspected in person against our 22-point criteria, not lifted from a brochure, so you are booking a stay someone from our team has genuinely walked through.
"I grew up on Crete, so this island is not a destination for me — it is home," says Eleni Trachalakis, our Greece Operations Manager, who spent years as a Thomas Cook resort representative across the island before joining GoToBeach. "The mistake people make is treating Crete as one place. Hersonissos and the quiet south are the same island on paper and completely different holidays in person." Eleni still splits her summers between the resorts and the harbours, re-checking the hotels on this page so the photographs match the morning you actually arrive. She will happily tell you which beaches shelve gently for nervous swimmers and which towns need a taxi for every dinner — the things a brochure leaves out.
