Selene Beach And Spa Hotel

Fantastic service, hotel is excellent. Very clean very nice. Lots of fish. Lovely staff. Everything is free. Couldn't be happier

Room was lovely - we got a standard double with sea view and it was huge! Also enjoyed a lovely tester massage and looking forward to our Turkish bath and massage later this week! The food is also really good and has been easy to identify gluten free food for my partner.

Location

The hotel is in a fairly isolated location with very little to do within walking distance other than shops selling replica designer goods. If you’re looking to explore, be prepared for longer journeys. Our TUI transfer took around 2 hours on arrival (11pm) and 3 hours on the return journey (5pm), which made travelling days quite tiring. Alanya is the nearest town, but many guests commented that taxis were expensive.

Beach & Pool This was the biggest disappointment of our stay. The beach was extremely dirty, with visible rubbish floating in the sea. On one occasion, someone was standing in the water with a net trying to collect the waste. After visiting once, we chose not to return and stayed near the pool.

Although the hotel is adults-only, the beach itself isn’t so much. The neighbouring hotels have children’s pools and water slides nearby, so it isn’t the peaceful adults-only experience we expected.

The pool itself is pleasant, with water loungers that are a nice feature. However, there aren’t enough sunbeds for the number of guests. Most pool front ones were reserved with towels from around 7:30–8:00am but remained unused until the afternoon, making it difficult to find somewhere to sit, often the ones left at 9am were in the trees. There’s a rooftop pool, which you aren’t able to use unless you pay to use the spa, and only then can you use it for one day.

There is both a snack bar and a garden bar by the pool. Unfortunately, the garden bar was covered in ants around the drinks and beer mats. When I mentioned this to a member of staff, they laughed rather than addressing the issue, which put me off using the bar for the remainder of the holiday.

Food The main buffet restaurant offered a variety of food. It was what you’d expect from a standard all-inclusive hotel, with choice to find something each day. One day, I used the outside bbq / grill where there was a selection of grilled meats, when I asked the chef I was adviced that there was beef&chicken. The chicken was lovely however the beef was soon noticed to not be beef and it was fish, which I do not like and I spent a while feeling unwell after unexpectedly eating this.

We ate a lot at the snack bar restraunt, On the last day, we had ‘dodgy’ chicken at the snack bar. Other than that every day we had a great lunch, pizzas, calzones, pastas, wraps.

Guests are also entitled to one visit to the à la carte restaurant during a week’s stay. This was one of the highlights of our holiday, with tasty food and a great rooftop view.

Another standout was the patisserie, open from 11am until 7pm, serving cakes, ice cream and iced coffees. It was excellent, although it would have been nice if it stayed open later into the evening, for some ice cream or drinks after food.

Drinks

The cocktail menu is extensive, with plenty of choice. I particularly enjoyed the Pornstar Martini, although it was only available from the garden bar, which I stopped using after noticing the hygiene issues. There were also frappés, slushies and a good selection of other drinks included.

Rooms

The reception staff were welcoming on arrival and offered us a discounted upgrade to a sea-view room, which we declined. Ironically, our allocated room already had a sea view overlooking both the pool and beach.

The room itself was modern and comfortable, and complimentary soft drinks and bottled water in the minibar on arrival were a nice touch.

The only downsides were that there was only one plug socket beside the bed, with the other located across the room near the television, and the walls were quite thin. We could clearly hear our neighbours’ alarms every morning.

Entertainment

There were daytime activities such as yoga and darts, with varied evening entertainment including karaoke and pool parties.

However, the evening entertainment didn’t begin until around 9:30pm, and the entertainment from neighbouring hotels was often louder and overpowered Selene’s performances. We frequently found ourselves watching and listening to the neighbouring hotel’s entertainment from our balcony instead.

Overall

The hotel itself was generally clean, particularly the indoor areas and snack bar. However, the cleanliness of the garden bar was disappointing and significantly affected our experience.

For the price we paid, we still had a relaxing holiday with some enjoyable aspects, particularly the patisserie, à la carte restaurant and the quality of the rooms. Unfortunately, the poor beach, lack of nearby attractions, hygiene concerns at the garden bar and shortage of sunbeds mean we wouldn’t choose to return.

In our opinion, this hotel doesn’t meet the standard expected of a 5-star property. We’d rate it around 3.5 out of 5 overall.