Myconian Sunrise brought the Daktylides family one cove west of Elia

Myconian Sunrise reopened on Agrari Beach for the 2025 season as the 14th hotel the Daktylides family runs on Mykonos. Six of the other 13 stand on Elia, the next beach to the east, over the headland. Galal Mahmoud, the Lebanese architect who has worked for the family since 2015, set its interiors in the 1970s, the decade they opened their first 25 rooms.

The setting

Agrari is a sheltered sandy bay on the south coast, 9 kilometres from Mykonos Town and 20 minutes by road from the airport. The hotel steps down to it, so the beach is directly below the rooms and everything else on the island is a drive. The hotel recommends a hired car or a motorbike, because taxis can be scarce in high season. It also runs a private shuttle to Deos, the family’s hotel above the town. A water taxi calls at the beach for Platis Gialos, and Elia is the next cove along.

The history

George and Elefteria Daktylides opened Kohili, 25 rooms above the town and its windmills, in 1979. Their four sons, Panos, Markos, Vangelis and Marios, now run the Myconian Collection. Between that first hotel and this one, the family built six hotels on Elia and four in the town, so they have looked across at Agrari since 1979. The hotel dates weddings and parties on the beach to the early 1970s, the same decade Kohili opened.

The purchase of the old Sunrise Beach Hotel was announced on 5 August 2024. By March 2025, the reopening was planned for May.

The design

Mahmoud’s practice, GM Architects, refurbished the Ambassador at Platis Gialos in 2015 and designed Deos in the town in 2024, so Sunrise is its third building for the family. The practice describes the beach suites as a feast of colour and pattern in the style of 1970s Mykonos. Outside, it kept to whitewash and timber shutters.

Inside Almiriki, the beachfront taverna, it used chestnut timber from the island, rattan, coloured cement tiles and a palette of greens and light browns. The walls are shaped like the leaf of the tamarisk, a shrubby seaside tree. The restaurant terrace was built among the existing tamarisks, and they still stand. In the photographs, a patterned, backlit headboard and a pair of tiered rope pendant lamps carry one bedroom, while the linen and the floor around them are plain. The 1970s appear as a reference, and the rooms do not become a period set.

The rooms

There are seven room types. The smallest is 20 m² on the ground floor, with a terrace facing the pool and the beach across the garden. The largest is the Executive Beachfront Two-Bedroom Suite, with 75 m² inside and 45 m² of deck with a Jacuzzi. Twenty square metres is small by any measure, and the room’s appeal is its terrace. What separates the other rooms is the slope. The upper rooms have the long view over the bay. The beachfront suites trade that view for the Jacuzzi deck and the shortest walk to the sand. Garden-view and sea-view rooms are listed as separate types at the same 24 m². That is a fair distinction, because they make for different holidays.

The table

Almiriki is the Greek word for the tamarisk, and the restaurant’s garden terrace sits among the trees. Almiriki, under Executive Chef Ilias Maslaris, is open from noon until 10.30pm, and breakfast is served on the pool terrace from 7.30am. It shares its sourcing with the family’s other kitchens. Herbs, seasonal vegetables and fruit are grown for the group alone. The fleur de sel, a fine sea salt, is harvested around Delos, the island 30 minutes from the town by boat. The octopus comes from a lifelong friend of the family who knows the local water. George Daktylides himself rears lamb and pork on family land; he took up livestock after he retired as chief executive in 2011.

The beach club below has the same name, with loungers, a bar and the taverna’s menu on the sand. Its tables are set inside large woven domes. The wind on this coast is the meltemi, the strong summer north wind, which blows hardest in July and August. The domes are the one part of the design made for the weather more than for the decade.

Who is this for

Sunrise suits travellers who want Agrari to be the whole of the day, and guests who know the family’s hotels on Elia and want a quieter cove. Rocky hillsides shelter the bay on both sides, and the sand is fine and the water calm. The pool sits on a terrace between the gardens and the beach, out of the breeze. In the bar, walnut stools stand at a green marble counter under a ceiling of reed and timber.