The Mistral Hotel, a leading specialist in providing holidays for independent and single travellers, has picked up a top honour in the 2017 Solo Travel Awards.
The 35-room boutique hotel, near Chania on western Crete, was named a winner in the coveted Packaged Trips section in the inaugural awards organised by the Solo Traveler website.
Over the past few years, the family-run Mistral Hotel has carved a reputation as a destination for solo travellers with high levels of customer service and repeat bookings. Co-owner Vassilis Gialamarakis told Essential Journeys: “We are delighted and proud to have won this award. We know our guests like what we do as many come back to us year after year, but it is tremendous for us to be recognised in this way in the Solo Travel Awards. We are also seeing many new guests, attracted by the opportunity to enjoy excursions or activities with us, or simply relax by our pools and enjoy our Cretan hospitality.”
One of the attractions of the Mistral is that all rooms are stylish double rooms for single occupancy (with no single supplement), with an ethos where solo travellers can enjoy a relaxing vacation with like-minded people who want to go on holiday on their own for a variety of reasons, but don’t want to be alone. Alongside its renowned excursions to popular beaches, restaurants, natural and historical sites and attractions, The Mistral also offers a range of themed weeks for walking and cultural trips. With a spa for treatments and therapies, guests at the Mistral can also enjoy the finest traditional Cretan cuisine – said to be the healthiest food in the world – from its kitchen.
Canada-based Solo Traveler is an online resource and community focused on providing information, inspiration and advocacy for the solo traveller and the travel industry that is growing to serve them. With over 300,000 travellers from 159 countries engaging with the community every month, it launched the Solo Travel Awards to recognise companies which cater well for the solo travel market. While there are more and more solo travellers, partly due to demographics and personal choice, the site says it is still not always easy to travel in this way. With the support of its premier sponsor, online travel company World Nomads, Solo Traveler (https://solotravelerworld.com/) enlisted the expertise of judges and influencers in the sector to determine the winners. The selection criteria for the awards included how well companies cater to solo travellers in terms of whether they apply a single supplement and how much is charged; whether prices are published based on double occupancy; whether solo spaces are limited and if so, how many are allocated for solo travellers; and whether there are special services provided for solo travellers before or during trips.
The Mistral Hotel has 35 rooms, a spa, two pools and a restaurant serving the finest traditional Cretan cuisine. Located at Maleme near Chania in western Crete, it is run by the Gialamarakis family. Open from April to mid-October, along with offering excursions, it also hosts themed walking, cultural and spring flowers weeks, and is within easy reach of fabulous beaches such as Falasarna and Elafonisi, as well as the Samaria Gorge.
