I am 19 years old and I spent a week in Kamelya Selin. Straight to the point: Hotel Selin is a great place to enjoy your holiday time, but there are few minor glitches (especially in service) you need to know about.
Rooms and public areas of Selin : As the hotel was fully refurbished in 2008, rooms are modern, but also very spacious and clean, with LCD tv( 36 chanells, majority is german, turkish and russian, but there is CNN, BBC and Eurosport, all of them in international editions), there is no PayTV avaiable, but if you are interested, there is AdultMovie chanell free of charge. Bathroom is a bit small, but there is a good bath and even enlarging mirror with its own light. Beds are sort of kingsize with quality mattresses, just lying on the bed is like a lullaby. Even an extra bed was comfortable, although in comparison with original bed, there was no match.
Every double room has its balcony, and be aware that the balcony door has to be closed to let aircondition work. Aircon is good, but as someone mentioned in his review, it is turned off during the night.
Internet connectivity in Selin hotel is perfect. There is Wi-Fi avaiable in the Lobby(free-of-charge), but what is even better, is the Ethernet connection directly in every room, which is also free. The connection is fast( online-video streaming is not an issue) and I have not noticed even a speed drop during the whole week, not to mention breakdowns. Perfect.
Public areas of Selin are nice and clean, only the on-wall paintings are sort of cheesy, but you do not have to care about that. There are five elevators purely for guests ( staff has its own), but for some reason, not all the elevs. work all the time. But that is not a thing to be concerned about, as the elevs. can handle the situation without making you go despair to get to your favourite bar or restaurant :).
All of the areas like main restaurant, lobby, sport facilities are clean and there are glasses prepared for the guests together with some fruits on the reception. (dont drink the "champagne", it is not much of a tasty stuff).
Food and drinks: If you have already found some info about Kamelya, you might know that there are seven bars and three main restaurants(one for every hotel). There are also special restaurants( turkish, italian, chinese etc) where you can come for a dinner only if you book your table in forward. As I was there only for a week and everyone in my group was satisfied with food in main Selin restaur. I was not to any of those special ones. The main restaurant offers very wide range of food from breakfast to dinner. My preferences are slow-food and not to eat caloric meals three times a day, and I was satisfied. I promise, everyone from person on diet(there is a special buffet issued for them) to Michael Phelps like eater will find a range of well prepared food to eat. Only patisserie products were not top-notch, but cakes and sweets were exceptionally tasty. If you can not live without pork, do not go to Selin, but you know, that is an issue of all islamic countries.
I was satisfied with the selections of drinks offered, turkish beer Efes is surprisingly good, spirits are not first-class, but vodka and cognac are O.K. even for drinking in high-profile mode( the hangover is not any worse as it is after getting intoxicated by their original counterparts). Alcohol free drinks and juices are usually too sweet, but not bad in general. If you prefer sugarfree Coke, there is Coke-light, but no Coke Zero offered.
You might have heard there is a daily-refilled minibar in every guestroom. If you put a small tip( 3 euro is fair) on your fridge with a small list of what you want (like 6 beers and 4 sodas) the minibar man will be kind to fill your fridge with it. Without tip, he ll give you just 2 beers, waters and sugared drinks. Your choice.
Service: This is sort of an issue in Selin. It could be my paranoia, but i often felt like everyone is waiting for the tip(baksheesh) to give you fair amout of service. Of course they ll serve you also without it for most of the time, but the attitude-change of staff when given the tip is very radical. Without it, most of them are almost apathetic or worse, cocky. Once we came to dinner a litlle later( hotel brochure tells you that 2030 is the convenient time to come) and we needed a table to be newly prepared and issued with cutlery and new tablecover, as the old one was left dirty by someone who had eaten there before. Young turkish waiter brought the cutlery and tried to seat us to that dirty tablecloth, smiling like total idiot. After we refused, he left. When we got a bit angry and decided to find a manager to sort out the situation, older waiter came and politely provided new tablecloth and drinks. As a result, we gave no tip to anyone of the lads in main restaurant that evening. Once during the lunch, one waiter was overlooking us so blatantly that it became sort of comic. Also bartenders expect some tip, they give you maybe even trice the dose of alcohol compared to usual drinks.
As you are told by graph displayed on the reception, sixty percent of guests are Germans and more than 20 percent are russians ( only 2 percent from UK). As a result, only english speaking staff are the receptionists, and do not expect any special info in english from them, but when I used german, their were fare more talkative. Room cleaners speek only really basic german, it is more like "putzen" than " zimmer aufräumen". They expect a tip, but work fine even without it.
Animation programme was occupied by germans, so i did not take part in any of the activities, but there is a few like water-polo, darts, petanque and water gymnastics. There was no tennis coach or animations on site, but it is possible to get tennis coach if you want. There are maybe three football pitches by the hotel, but there was nothing like football games for guests, what I think would be widely appreciated. Those pitches look professional, more like being prepared for StevieG's than average amateurs.
Towel service is O.K, you get beach towel cards when doing the check-in and you pick and change your pool-beach towels by the pool. However, if you want to secure yourself a good spot by the pool or even at the beach, you have to get up bloody early ( 0645 a.m.) and put your towels on selected sunbeds.
There are even shops in Kamelya World, most of them provide lousy overpriced goods and poor selection, but there is one small shop with newspaper from all over the world, however, from UK there is only current issue is The Sun, all others (Times, Observer, Daily Mail) are a day old. If candy like Mentos and chewing gums are vital for you(as are for me) be prepared to pay a bit more than in normal stores all over the non-hotel world. If you check the price of beer, you ll far more appreciate the minibar hint I wrote earlier.
Facilities: As I like to do some sport almost daily, I was thrilled with range of sport facilities in Selin. There is a whole Spa-Fitness part of hotel and it is free of charge, excluding massages etc. there is nicely equipped fittness centre even with towels, water and flatscreens to watch something when doing your work-out. After the work out, there are two sauna rooms, steam bath( which is too hot to stay in) and indoor pool which is almost always vacant and you can swimm there as much as you want. This whole Fitness-Spa place is a great plus of the hotel if you like to do some excercise. Outdoor poll is huge, but the one by Selin is only 140cm deep, what is not much. Beach is really clean and well maintained, there are also clean showers and toilets to wash off all the sand and salt water. The Beach has Blue Flag, what is sort of an award for well maintained beaches all over the Europe.
Tennis courts are two and they are not meant to be used for professional games, as the surface is really lazy and slow, but the fence around is strong(you do not lose a ball too often) and either in the early morning or around 6 p.m. courts offer nice chance to play some more relaxed tennis.
There is an aquapark in the Resort, it has four slides, it is nothing superb, but it is free and could be a nice experience after spending hours in the calm waters of the pool.
Location: It will take an hour or so to get to the hotel from Antalya airport, which itself is a disgrace, especially the departure hall of terminal 2 should be enlarged soon. The Kamelya resort itself is about 15 km from Side and there are few "beach and fake goods" shops nearby the resort, but it is hardly worth a visit. No english newspaper there, only HSBC ATM on site. As we were in turkey only for a week, we did not visit the city of Side.
If you are planning to go on holiday with a group of friends and you fancy clubbing, be aware that it might be sort of a problem to fully enjoy nightlife in the location. If you decide to take taxi(it is not a problem from the resort gates) to Side, than problem is solved.
Overally, Selin definitely is a value-for-money-wise clever decision. You get what you pay for, and if you pay a little extra to the right people in tips, you will spend your holiday in finest comfort.
ask more if you feel a need to do so.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
