JW Marriott opened its first Greek house in June 2025, at Marathi on Souda Bay, a little east of Chania; Marriott announced the debut on 11 June. JW Marriott Crete Resort & Spa holds 160 rooms, suites and villas across more than 100 acres of coastline, drawn by the Athens studio Block722 for Vasilakis SA, which had signed the agreement with Marriott in March 2024. For a brand of more than 125 hotels across 40 countries and territories, Crete is the first Greek ground it has stood on.

The setting

Marathi is a coastal village on Souda Bay, on Crete’s north-west shore. Block722 set the house on the rocky hillside of Akra Pelegri, where the ground falls in terraces to the water and the view runs out past the islet of Palaiosouda. The estate covers more than 100 acres. Little of that is built on: the volumes step down the slope rather than across it, and the original topography was put back once construction stopped.

The provenance

The resort is owned by Vasilakis SA, the company of Antonios Vasilakis, and operated by SWOT Hospitality as third-party operator of the franchised property. Marriott and Vasilakis SA announced the agreement in March 2024, for 160 keys on 100 acres. Announcing it, Jerome Briet, Marriott’s chief development officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, put the signing down to the continued demand the group was seeing for luxury rooms across Greece. Fifteen months later the doors opened.

The design

Block722 held creative direction, architecture and interior design. The landscape is the work of Doxiadis+, the Athens practice; the lighting, of L+DG Lighting Architects. The material logic is local to the point of literalness — stone walls raised from rock cut out of the site itself, concrete carrying aggregate from the same ground, roofs planted over, groves of olive and carob left standing. Inside, the palette is terracotta, olive, sand and stone, with sculptural lighting and handmade ceramics that answer Cretan forms rather than copy them. Nearly all of the material, making and construction was placed with Cretan suppliers, artisans and manufacturers.

The rooms

There are 160 rooms, suites and villas, the majority of them carrying private pools, and at capacity the house holds 450 guests. Each room takes a wide window onto the sea and a shaded terrace beyond it, in the same earth register as the rooms below.

The table

Six venues hold the table. ANOEE is the Cretan room, cooked over open fire by Manolis Papoutsakis, who works the island’s traditional techniques and its foraged ingredients. Õnalos is sea-to-table; Cuccagna is rustic Italian with a contemporary hand; Fayi serves Mediterranean sharing plates. Suncti by the Pool and Eēxis keep the lighter hours with wine, cocktails and small dishes. The JW Garden supplies thyme, oregano and capers to kitchens and bar alike, and the mixology programme was built with Line Athens around Cretan botanicals. The house also holds Europe’s first JW Market, a café and retail room given to local produce.

The spa

ANOSEAS sets Cretan healing practice against modern therapy across 5 treatment rooms, with hydrotherapy and a beauty room. A yoga deck and a fitness room sit alongside it, and 4 swimming pools are cut into the terraces above the sea.

The stewardship

The systems beneath are the quieter part of the brief. Geothermal and solar carry the energy load; heat recovered from the air conditioning warms the water; treated grey water goes to the irrigation. Planted roofs and native planting hold the slope, and the buildings were embedded in the coastal landscape rather than laid over it.

The interest of Marathi is scale, and what was asked of the scale. More than 100 acres is a great deal of coast to give to one house, and the answer here was to bury the building in the hillside, plant the roofs, and return the ground when the work was done. Crete’s north-west shore has not wanted for arrivals; what it has rarely been given is one this large that would prefer not to be seen from the water.

The house makes the introduction, for those who ask.