Celay Hotel

We booked this hotel as part of a package holiday through Love Holidays. Our flight and transfer meant we arrived at the hotel around 7:00am. We were told that check-in wasn’t until 2:00pm unless we paid an early check-in fee. Having travelled to Turkey many times over the years, I’ve never had to pay extra just to access my room early after arriving on an overnight flight, so this came as quite a surprise.

Another disappointment was the air conditioning. The hotel’s website states that rooms come with air conditioning, but when we arrived we were told it was an additional charge. Before we’d even stepped into our room, we’d already spent around £70 on early check-in and air conditioning, which left a bit of a sour first impression.

We had originally booked a standard room and were told we’d been upgraded to a deluxe room. Unfortunately, the “upgraded” room wasn’t what we expected. The balcony was enclosed by a high wall with no view at all, and directly above it was where the pool inflatables were stored, so people were constantly looking down into our balcony. On the other side of the wall, the gardener regularly walked past just a few feet from our seating area, meaning there was very little privacy.

We went back to reception and asked if we could move rooms. To be fair, they agreed, although we had to wait around another three hours before the new room was ready. The second room was much better, overlooking the pool with a lovely view. It was clean and tidy, and although the furniture was a little dated, it was perfectly comfortable and we weren’t in Turkey to admire the décor!

Breakfast was fairly average. There was a selection of cucumber, tomatoes, ham, cheese, boiled eggs, bread, olives and a few other bits, but nothing particularly exciting.

The staff were polite enough, but we did notice that regular guests seemed to receive much warmer service and conversation. As first-time visitors, we didn’t really feel particularly welcomed.

The biggest positive was definitely the pool. It was clean, a great size, and one of the best parts of the hotel. We spent plenty of time relaxing there and couldn’t fault it.

Overall, the hotel was clean and perfectly adequate if you’re just looking for somewhere to sleep and enjoy the pool. However, because of the unexpected extra charges, disappointing first room, and lack of atmosphere from the staff, I personally wouldn’t choose to stay here again.

On arrival we taken to one room and told this is only for tonight then we will be moving you into your other room when we didget put in our room then told the air-conditioning is £6 a day which wasn’t the greatest of air-conditioning they had to get an engineer to come and re-Gas it then one night it was making a terrible noise. We got the night receptionist to and have a look at it he said I will give you a fan and then said you’ll have to pay £3 for .Then on returning to the room after being around the pool there was Ants all over the bed when we told the person at reception she basically accused us of having food or drinks in the room when this was only on our first full day as we arrived late at night. When you pay by card to settle your bill at the end of the day they put a charge for using the card even though our bank doesn’t charge for using their cards abroad. There was only two plug sockets in the room and they were nowhere near the bed. They had to give me an extension lead so I could plug my CPAC machine in. Then in our daughter’s room, the cleaner pulled the hand off of the inside of the door when our daughter went back in she couldn’t get out of the room. I went and let her out by opening it from the outside we told the person at the bar and he said we need to someone to do it, but we don’t know when they’ll be turning up so she can’t go back in the room because she won’t be able to get out in the end. I said I will go and fix it and showed him how to do it. overall, this could be a really nice hotel if it was brought up-to-date.