Cornelia de Luxe Resort

This hotel gives to you a fine experience both in hotel but also at the golf course. Everything is clean, worker's outside, restaurants etc are working hard, but they are not unpolite but very friendly. The entertainment group with Maroccoan man, Imre, Leyla, Zumba teacher was excellent. So you had lot to do at daytime, if you weren't golfing. And there were programme in the evenings. And the food was amazing with special nights. Breakfast and lunch were great. Our room was in the fifth floor with some view to the sea. The room was nice and with good equipment . A friendly cleaner looked after the room every day. Thank you for this experience with you

When this review was written I was in resort in a group of 8, it has taken Tripadvisor 4 days to review it - I am re-writing after inserting the word “probable”.

This was our 10th Belek trip and approx 35th overall for the group. It is, unfortunately, also a first really bad experience.

Altho inferior to several others we have stayed at (Voyage, Gloria, Rixos, even Cornelia Diamond) there are good things about this hotel:

• the friendly & attentive staff;
• the a la carte restaurants,
• the golf course is good (mid to high-ranking for Belek).

But, one big problem eclipses all else - a lack of reasonable empathy from the hotel when things go wrong - particularly concerning when other guests were clearly at risk…

After the buffet meal on night two, three of our group went down with an aggressive sickness & diarrhoea bug which saw me continually sick for 9 hours, confined to my room for almost 48 hours and still suffering “symptoms” after 4 days. Needless to say, quite apart from the lost holiday time & cost, this was an unpleasant experience.

Our group has, without seeking them out, also come across two other groups who described 5 & 4 people respectively with the same symptoms.

This could have been avoided by the hotel as their problems commenced after mine/ours!

One round of golf was missed by several of us and my pre-arranged trip to Antalya had to be cancelled. I am a walking golfer but was forced to rent buggies at costs €25-€50 for the three remaining rounds, simply to get round the course whilst debilitated. Ironically, this money goes to …. Cornelia … & they wouldn’t even cover this!!

The bug was reported to Guest Relations on day #1. We were advised that “if your colleagues can’t come down to the doctors office, our nurse can visit them.”

In other words the doctor would not come up.

The nurse was declined as no apparent purpose would be served. It was physically impossible for me to visit the doctor’s office without risking an embarrassing “accident” - maybe on the foyer floor.

Once partially recovered, I visited hotel management to describe our disappointment and seek some form of reasonable recompense for wasted time & money.

The response from Elena, Reception Manager (plus my observations):

• only the three of us had complained (there are other groups also with illness);
• the bug was more likely caused by hot days + chilly nights (we were inside and, anyway, it’s c 18 degrees C at night?);
• there are no other, more senior management you can speak to;
• if we had doctor reports they would have taken us more seriously (it was impossible to leave the hotel room, we had not been advised we would need a doctor to witness our suffering and our illness had been reported on day #1).

This last point is particularly irritating in view of the doctor’s apparent refusal to leave his office.

We are effectively being accused of lying.

I arranged a meeting with the hotel General Manager to take this further but, when I attended the following day, was told he was in London after all?

Other general comments

When confined to your room for several days you also realise there are other issues :

• the aircon is poor (in November, so what would summer be like?!);
• the TV for english speakers is very poor;
• the beds aren’t high quality enough for 48 hours non-stop, as your back will tell you.

In summary

Bad luck happens from time to time and neither I nor my equally solvent, 60 year old friends need to extract (or wish to waste our time pursuing) unreasonable compensation from hotels to make a living.

However, it’s the way a business at fault responds to such problems that measures their integrity and commitment to customer service and living up to their supposed brand values. This hotel’s management will not entertain reimbursing us for the costs of lost holiday time caused by their own errors. I wish to emphasise, we were seeking only to have the prepaid but lost expenses recovered.

I can only suggest you avoid this hotel group if you’re planning a visit to Belek.

I also make the following suggestions if you are already committed to visit and the same unpleasant experience befalls you:

• insist that the hotel doctor visits you in your room and provides a written report;
• make sure you get your rep involved early in the process (ours couldn’t help after the event);
• be very careful if you intend to eat buffet food.

As we left, the same dishes had been laid out every night in the main buffet restaurant. It seems to me almost certain that those unfinished dishes would be rotated in and out of the kitchen until they were finally used up, no matter what the impact on the guests.

You have been warned!