Where to Stay in Crete: Six Regions Compared

Crete has four prefectures and about 1,000 km of coastline, and the difference between a good base and a bad one is measured in hours of driving. Stay in the wrong place and you will spend your holiday on the national road. Below are six regions that each serve a different kind of trip, with what they cost, what they are near, and who should avoid them.

The six regions compared

Region	Best for	Typical July double	Nearest airport	Drive to Knossos	Drive to Elafonisi	Nightlife
Rethymno	All-rounders, first-timers, food	Mid-range	CHQ or HER, ~1 h	1 h 15	2 h 15	Old-town bars, moderate
Chania & the west	Beaches, gorges, couples	Premium in the old town	CHQ, 20 min	2 h 15	1 h 30	Wine bars, harbour, relaxed
Apokoronas (Almyrida, Georgioupolis)	Families with small children	Mid-range	CHQ, 35-45 min	1 h 30	2 h	Village tavernas only
Hersonissos & Malia	Party, big resorts, teenagers	Wide range	HER, 20-30 min	30 min	3 h 45	The party strip
Elounda & Agios Nikolaos	Luxury, couples, Spinalonga	Very high in Elounda	HER, 1 h	1 h 10	4 h	Hotel bars, town bars
Plakias & the south coast	Quiet, wind shelter, hikers	Low to mid	CHQ or HER, ~1 h 30	1 h 45	2 h 30	Almost none

1. Rethymno — the best all-round base

Rethymno sits almost exactly halfway along the north coast, roughly an hour from both airports and 50 minutes from Chania. That central position is the whole argument: the west's beaches and gorges are within two hours, Knossos is 75 minutes, and the south coast is 40 minutes over the hills.

The town itself is more than a convenient dot on a map. The old town is the best-preserved Renaissance quarter in Greece, a grid of Venetian doorways and Ottoman minarets with the Fortezza on the headland above and a long sandy beach running east from the harbour. It is also the island's most interesting place to eat: enough tourism to sustain ambition, enough local trade to keep it honest.

Stay here if: you want one hotel for the whole trip, you care about food, or you cannot decide between west and east. Avoid if: you want the very best beaches on your doorstep rather than an hour away.

Start with the Romance & History in Rethymno evening walk or the morning Rethymno Walk & Taste food tour.

2. Chania and the west — for beaches and gorges

If your holiday is mostly sand, base west. Elafonisi's pink lagoon is 90 minutes away, Falassarna 75, Balos an hour plus a boat or a rough track. The Samaria trailhead at Omalos is an hour. Chania's old town, wrapped around a Venetian harbour with an Egyptian lighthouse at its mouth, is the most photographed place on Crete and prices accordingly in July and August.

You have two sub-choices. Inside the old town you get boutique hotels in restored mansions, atmosphere, and no parking. In the coastal suburbs of Agia Marina, Platanias and Stalos you get resort hotels, family facilities and easy parking, at the cost of a fairly built-up strip.

Stay here if: beaches and gorge walks are the point. Avoid if: you want to see Spinalonga, Elounda or the east; they are four to five hour round trips.

3. Apokoronas — Almyrida and Georgioupolis, for young families

The Apokoronas is the green, low-lying region between Chania and Rethymno, and its two coastal villages are the most reliably family-friendly bases on Crete. Almyrida is a pair of sandy beaches divided by a rocky spit, sheltered from the north wind so the water stays flat when the meltemi is blowing everywhere else. Georgioupolis has a beach that runs for kilometres, fed cool by the Almiros river, with the tiny chapel of Agios Nikolaos on its causeway out to sea.

Both have family-run hotels, tavernas on the sand, and no nightclubs. Lake Kournas, Crete's only freshwater lake, is ten minutes inland — see Lake Kournas & Argyroupoli Springs.

Stay here if: you have children under ten. Avoid if: you want evenings out or you are travelling without a car; bus links are thinner than on the main coast.

4. Hersonissos and Malia — for nightlife

East of Heraklion, these two resort towns are the package-holiday party belt: long organised sandy beaches, clubs, and bars that run to dawn. They are also very well connected — 20 to 30 minutes from Heraklion airport, 30 minutes from Knossos, and on the main bus route.

They are not, whatever the brochures say, a quiet family base in high summer, though the quieter ends of Malia beach and the older village of Hersonissos above the strip are a different proposition entirely.

Stay here if: you are under 25, or travelling with teenagers who want something to do at 11pm. Avoid if: you want anything that could be described as authentic.

5. Elounda and Agios Nikolaos — for luxury and couples

Elounda, on Mirabello Bay in eastern Crete, holds the most exclusive hotel stock in Greece outside Mykonos: five-star resorts with private pools, seafront villas, and prices to match. Agios Nikolaos next door is the more normal town — a working harbour built around a small deep lake, with good restaurants and enough life outside the hotels.

The region's other asset is Spinalonga, the fortress island in the bay that was Europe's last leper colony until 1957 and is now the most affecting historic site on the island. Boats leave from Plaka and Elounda every half hour in season.

Stay here if: you want a resort holiday with occasional excursions, or a honeymoon. Avoid if: you want to see western Crete. Elafonisi is four hours away.

6. Plakias and the south coast — for quiet and for wind

Crete's south coast is the island's escape valve. When the meltemi rakes the north coast in July and August and turns the sea to chop, the south is calm. Plakias is a wide sandy bay with a village behind it, Damnoni is ten minutes east, and Preveli's palm-lined river beach is 20 minutes away. Behind them the Kourtaliotiko Gorge cuts north towards Spili.

It is genuinely quiet. There are tavernas and a few small hotels, and that is the extent of it. The trade-off is distance from the airports, roughly 90 minutes each, on roads that cross the mountains.

Stay here if: you want to swim and read and eat, or you are visiting in high summer and hate wind. Avoid if: you have no car, or you need entertainment.

What about Heraklion city?

Heraklion is the cheapest base and the best-connected — the main airport, the main port, daily ferries to Piraeus, and Knossos 15 minutes away. It is a real, unpolished Greek city with a superb Archaeological Museum. What it does not have is a beach worth the name or an evening you would travel for. Use it for a night at either end of a trip, or as a base if museums and ferries are your priority.

Do you need to move hotels?

For a week, no, if you base in Rethymno or Chania. For ten days or more, yes: split west and east and save yourself two long transfer days. The rule of thumb is that anything more than two hours' drive each way should be a change of base rather than a day trip.