Villa Blue Horizon

Stayed for 3 nights at White Pearl Villas. Second time in Oia, Santorini. (Oia is awesome). Overall it was an excellent place. It's important to understand when you stay in Oia, that you are very likely going to stay in a cliff side room that requires walking up and down stairs. It's just part of the experience. Also, on the island and around Greece in general there are lots of cats wandering around as there seems to be a kinship between cats and the Greek culture. IMO, these things should not be thought of as negatives. Rather, part of the experience of another culture. At the White Pearl Villas, the views of the Caldera are incredible. Sunrises and Sunsets are breathtaking. That said, there are lots of photos to be taken all over the island. The rooms are just different. Since they are built into cliff sides they often have a cave-like feel. Our family embraced the rooms as something that is just differently cool! The rooms at White Pearl were very clean, everything worked and our room was even a bit more spacious than expected. It had a secondary living room. Which was great to log on in the morning and not disturb the rest of the family. The Service was great. Porter toted our bags up and down the stairs. Not an easy task. If you go to Oia you'll see what I mean. Breakfast in the room was not the norm here. Rather there is a restaurant at the top of the stairs (Luno Cafe) where a complimentary breakfast is served. Good food. Somewhat limited selection. But the most notable service action was by the manager who called our Quad tour operator for us to arrange a pickup time and place. As we were having difficulty communicating with the Quad tour operator. Note* We DID NOT set this tour up through White Pearl. But they solved our problem regardless. Overall, A great experience. If you understand what to expect in a hotel in Greece and more specifically in Oia then I would strongly recommend White Pearl Villas based on our experience.

White Pearl was amazing. Right on the entrance of the main strip of Oia, easy to drive and commute to other villages. Hotel will arrange pick up and take your luggage down the stairs to villa. Rooms are amazing with jacuzzi inside room and outside on balcony! Breakfast is full menu and the cafe just upstairs and is three course, served until noon! Konstantinos is the most amazing manager and if you need anything, you can easily WhatsApp message him & it’s taken care of within minutes. Truly the best hotel in Santorini. Splurge on the full moon villa, it’s worth it!

I was expecting a 5 Star experience, as said on Google and their website and I was met with merely an AirbnB experience. Don’t get me wrong – there were some positives, but I felt as though we had been a little scammed based on what we were expecting. When I booked this stay, it said breakfast was included and free breakfast is mentioned in the amenities. Breakfast was not included, it was €15 at the café downstairs. We did not partake in this option during our stay. We had arranged transfers to and from the port at arrival and departure, both were €60 which I thought was crazy! Not even one of them included a transfer with our stay for a 5 star hotel. When we arrived, check-in was very chaotic. We checked in at the café downstairs and the attendant showed us 2 options for our stay, even though I bad booked a specific room. The first room he showed us was the room I had booked except I was met with no privacy from the balcony unlike the photos on the website showed. The second room was next door on the corner which had even less privacy, so we chose the first room even though I was already disappointed in the lack of privacy vs. what I was expecting/shown to me when booking. You could see passersby through the window of the room and the balcony. Which would have been fine, if I was prepared for it! There was zero privacy. The only time there weren’t passersby was very early in the morning before the sun came up (the morning we left). The first night we stayed the music from the café was blasting until past midnight, it was Monday and I couldn’t sleep because of it. I found the beds to be very uncomfortable, the room was damp, and there were zero rugs so coming in and out of the plunge pool to our room was a slippery mess. They did make the bed but didn’t fully refresh the room — for example, dirty wine glasses were never replaced with clean ones. No bottled water was ever provided either, which again felt very off-brand for a so-called luxury stay. The positives: steps from Oia, the spacious room, our luggage was brought up to our room and brought down at check-in and check-out, they were also really responsive when booking transfers before arrival. But that’s really about it. I would not recommend this hotel if you are expecting a 5 star experience.

Overall our stay at White Pearl was good. The staff is very helpful and communicative to arrange transportation and activities, and generally the room was very clean. The views of the caldera are incredible. The hotel is also in a great area to walk anywhere in Oia. We were even upgraded to a larger villa free of charge, which was very nice. I rate 4/5 for a few small reasons though: Our villa came with a private outdoor pool, which we used once and were (very politely) asked not to use sunscreen while using the pool as it can damage the plumbing. My wife and I both need to use sunscreen to be able to lounge comfortably in a place like Santorini so unfortunately this meant that we could no longer use the pool during the day. This is not the hotels fault, but still aggravating because these pools are one of the primary reasons you book a villa as opposed to a regular room. So it would have been nice to know ahead of time when selecting our room as it effectively took that amenity away from us, since for our particular villa there was no umbrella or shade coverage where the pool was. Secondly, some of the staff would pop up on to our private balcony to close the umbrella. The issue with this is that the balcony is supposed to be private, and there are many windows looking directly to the inside of the room that you can see through the balcony but from no where else. We nearly had an issue with the staff catching us while changing clothes/etc because someone was just climbing up on to our balcony with no advance notice, despite us being told when we checked in that they’d send a message for us to close the umbrella ourselves. And then lastly, while the room overall was very clean, the indoor jacuzzi seemed to be filled with debris when we started filling it up. Not a huge deal, but in combination with the outdoor pool issue above it was kind of a bummer. Altogether none of this ruined our stay, but was enough that we would probably look elsewhere if we return to Oia. However I want to stress again that the hotel staff was extremely friendly and helpful, and our stay was generally very enjoyable, and the views are unreal.