Carmina Hotel Review

Overall Rating

Before reading this review of the Carmina Hotel, you must understand that it is in NO WAY exaggerated! It is a true account of our two-week holiday in Turkey. We have stayed in 2-5* hotels all across Europe, in self-catering, half board and all-inclusive. However, we have never stayed in a hotel as bad as the Carmina Hotel, Hisaronu.

Some parts of the hotel were obviously a lot worse than other parts, but I'm going to mention all aspects that we found to be dire.

We travelled as a family of 5, and when booking our holiday, we specifically asked that the two rooms we had booked were to be situated next to each other. This in fact was not the case when we arrived and the hotel management were not willing not to rectify this problem. The rooms themselves were standard. One room had no plug for the sink and the shower leaked massively. The other room had wall lights that didn't work; the fitted hairdryer didn't work and also had a similar problem with the shower leaking. Another problem was the toilet, in one room it did not flush properly. After requesting for it to be mended to the hotel management on numerous occasions, it was never done and we had to use the poolside toilet instead!

Another problem with regards to the room was the amount of hot water. I think, but am not sure, that it is solar heated and so there is very little hot water in the morning and late in the evening. I found myself on numerous occasions showering in freezing cold water. There is also an issue with the electricity. I'd say maybe once every three days there was a power cut, on one occasion we were left without power for 30 minutes! The electricity in the room is powered by inserting the room key into a slot, once it is removed to lock the door if you want to go out, the electricity is turned off, not very good if you go self catering and you wish to leave food in the fridge!! I also feel that the air-conditioning offered to guests is over priced. You can only power it when you're in the room, which is not very often; besides, air conditioning takes a while to kick in. They wanted to charge us £20 per week per room, which would have added another £80 to our holiday price, something we were not willing to do.

I'd say the biggest problem of the entire holiday was the food. We went half board at this hotel which I have to say is NOT AN OPION ANYONE SHOULD GO FOR! We were lead to believe that it would be a buffet style meal in the evenings of which it wasn't. We were sat at a table and given food that we had no choice over what so ever! One of the party was a vegetarian and had to eat veggie casserole after veggie casserole for near enough the entire two weeks. We found ourselves eating outside of the hotel on more than one occasion. In mentioning this to our rep, there was little she could do. The restaurant manager said to us that it would be easier for him if we opted against the half board option and tried to get our money back, as he was the one that had to decide what to cook us every night. The food in the morning was typical Turkish breakfast; basically we had the choice of bread, cheese, melon, olives, tomatoes and cucumber, nothing else! If you want an English breakfast you have to pay £4.50! You also have to pay for cereal if you have young children.

The entertainment put on by hotel staff was pitiful. Once a week in the hotel, there is a Turkish evening, which was in fact VERY GOOD! But as half board guests, you wouldn't think that we'd have to pay the £14 per person to attend! Other than this, there is a quiz once a week held on a Sunday. We arrived on a Sunday so was pretty impressed by this. However, the following Sunday, quiz night came again and guess what the questions were EXACTLY the same! We couldn't believe it. Other than this, there was no more entertainment put on at night.

The hotel bar beside the pool is very rowdy at night. Of course you have to expect that people on holiday are likely to stay up drinking until the early hours of the morning. On more than one occasion however, the bar remained open playing music until gone 4am! Not good when your room is situated just to the side of the bar. Another point to mention is that the bar staff themselves were also drunk, continuing to serve customers, on many instances. On one occasion, the bar staff were allowing a 14 year old boy to stand behind the bar and serve customers!

With reference to the bar, it is also worth mentioning the fact that they overcharge you, BIGTIME! They offer a system where you order your drinks and then give them your room number. This is then entered into the computer and you can pay your bill at the reception whenever you choose to. We made friends with around 6 families whilst there, and all had experienced problems with overcharging at the bar. On one occasion, a young lad was caught ordering drinks and putting them on another room numbers bill! A member of our party was charged 11lira for one drink! That's around £4.50!

There were as well many smaller problems. The TV in the room only offered two English-speaking channels, one of which was frozen and not operating for about 10 days of our fortnight stay! There is NO KIDS CLUB, even though this is advertised on their website and also on the brochure they hand out in the hotel reception. Another niggle was that they played the same CD over and over again! One of the songs "**** YOU RIGHT BACK" was played regardless to the numerous children staying in the hotel!

There was however some good points about the hotel, although very little. The staff were amazing, very welcoming, friendly and eager to learn English! The beach was great; the hotel offered a free transfer to a part of the beach owned by the hotel.

Although we experienced all of the above problems, we did however make the most of our holiday and try our best to ignore them. I would NEVER return to the Carmina Hotel and would not recommend it to anyone.

Members' Comments onstu4321's Review

• isabellamarie on 19th Oct 2005

  I have to agree with most of the review that this person has written but also have to disagree with some of it. We were there from the 25th july 2005 to the 10th august 2005. The music is played constantly without regard to people who work hard all year and just want to relax. The song we had was the same one that the previous review had. We also had candy girl by 50 cent played 7 times repeatedly in 1 hour at 1am. The bar staff we very friendly but we don't drink a lot of alcohol so did not spend hours at night in the bar. We also did not use the card scheme but paid cash for every drink or meal as we were only b&b. We had air-con and thought that £20 per week was fine to pay as had previously paid £50 in other countries and were given a key to keep in the slot that keeps your electricity on therefore we had air-con 24/7. We had requested a fridge as i am a diabetic but were warned that i would not be able to get one as the company i went with did not supply fridges. The fridge did not work but when we told the hotel staff who could not have been more helpful they tried to mend it then that afternoon they brought me a brand new just out the box. The fridges in the rooms in the hotel could do with upgrading but you are told in the brochures that the hotel is basic and you pay for what you get. Our room was clean when we arrived and cleaned everyday. The beds were made everyday and we did not complain about the television only having 2 english channels as we were on holiday. If we wanted to watch tv we would have stayed at home. The room we were in was a family room which was huge we had a couch and a cot both of which we didn't need as there was only 3 of us. There was a double bed and a single in the room. My only complaint of the room was that the wardrobe door didn't open properly, infact it fell of if you pulled it but all in all we really enjoyed our holiday in turkey and we have booked to go back to next year but this time we are trying Alanya. I did feel that the resort of Hisaronu was Blackpool without the lights and it is catered very much for the English/British.