Grand Hotel Selinunte

What People are saying

Not 'Grand' at all, just very friendly

MS4866 on 07/07/2017 20:30

An architecturally handsome building near the sea, this is in fact a grown-up hotel for children. It was full of young families with well-behaved and very charming children, who stayed up late and ate dinner in a civilised fashion with their parents. There is a nice pool, which is sometimes used for deafening 'activities' which everyone seemed to enjoy, but is fine the rest of the time, and there is a shuttle bus to the beach. The one negative was the food - 'boarding school' came to mind, and there was only a meat-or-fish option for the main course. But we enjoyed being among Italy's buckets-and-spades holidaymakers.

Nice room with balcony and view over pool, breakfast mediocre

vsop-50 on 20/06/2017 12:21

We stayed here for 3 nights.
Beds were comfortable. Although the rooms have airco, it also needs to be switched on by reception to make it work. This seems to be a Sicilian thing - we saw it in other hotels as well.
The room was nice and spacious, and we enjoyed sitting on our balcony in early evening with our drinks, however very noisy in early morning due to bus tourists dragging their suitcases in early morning, and loud voices echoing across the marble hallways.
Reception staff - some speak ok English, others do not.
Upon asking the bartender for some ice cubes, we were reluctantly supplied with this, but he was not very friendly about it.
Breakfast was the usual supply of Italian sweet things, including sugar-covered croissants. There was some fruit, but you had to be quick. I was able to get scrambled eggs with bacon or cocktail sausages, but only after asking. Restaurant staff was friendly. When there was a big busload of tourists in the hotel (several mornings), the breakfast buffet was quickly plundered of everything and not replenished. There was coffee, but the coffee machine was at the end of its service life - all buttons on the keypad had disappeared, and there was a very limited choice. We did not use the restaurant for dinner, preferred to go elsewhere.
The pool was very nice - we used it twice.
Our Wifi in the room was fairly ok, but only because our room was quite close to the central hallway - we could see other guests sit in the main lobby to get a connection. There was only one Wifi connection per room, so we had to ask a 2nd password for my wife's access.
The hotel is quite outside Marinella di Selinunte, so make sure you arrive with your own transport, but the drive to Selinunte beach and harbour is not far. The Archeological Park is close by as well, plus plenty of nice restaurants for dinner.

A hotel which is neither Grand, nor in Selinunte

jeffrey57 on 21/05/2015 12:25

I have waited a few days to do this review, to balance my opinion.

This hotel takes itself very seriously indeed. I was put off at the beginning at check in. The staff were pleasant, but condescending. When I asked for the password for the WiFi, the receptionist looked at me and explained that it was a little complicated. If I would hand her my tablet, she would do it for me ! Surprised, I did so. She put in a search and then some passwords and handed rhe laptopmback to me to complete a long form, requiring more personal details, than I was happy to supply. She then put in a final password and said I was ready to surf. The hotel could monitor every site I visited and I could see a clock, timing my access. Each day, I had to go through a complicated procedure to re-gain access. It loked like an old fashioned form of 'dial up', I haven't seen for years. The majority of the guests while I was there were large German coach tour parties. The hotel charges 5 euros, to drop you in town. They have a free shuttle to what they call a, 'private' beach. I never saw a private beach in the area, but in the Nature Reserve, beside the harbour, which has about 7 kilometres of beautiful soft golden sand - which is a public beach - several of the large hotels in the countryside, have set up sun beds and parasols, but the beach is public.

The location. The hotel is not on the Marinella at Selinunte. It is 4 kilometres outside the town, in the middle of nowhere. It has been built in some farmland. The landscape is flat, so there is little to see and I cannot understand why it was built here, unless the land was very cheap. You can though, see the sea in the far distance.

The building. I was expecting more from the name and was dissapointed, when the hotel came into view. As I said in the heading, it is not Grand. It looks like a building put up in the 1980s / 1990s. It is built in the Spanish style of two wings to a central communal building, 2 stories tall. It is 'functional', spotlessly clean, but now, very old fashioned. A series of Spanish arches, nothing Italian.

The rooms. Large with individual balconies, all facing a lovely pool and little else. The decor is dated pale wood furnishings - 1990s style. The ensuite bathrooms were OK, but I did not like the small shower cubicle in the corner, with folding plastic shutter doors, which were discoloured and manky at the bottom. It just did not look clean, though it probably was. The rooms and bathroms need completely updating to maintain it's star rating. The bedding was good quality and again spotless.

Breakfast. The dining room is huge, with windows looking out all round. What I found strange, is that all the tables with nice views.......were reserved ! Tables had reserved notices, with guests names and the number of days the table was reserved. It appears some guests were staying at least a week. All the best tables were reserved. You could not tell, if the person had been, or had not yet been to breakfast. The table was reserved for the whole breakfast period. I simply chose a table I liked and sat down. I could see the staff were not too pleased by this and they made their feelings felt, without actually asking me to move. The items on offer, were of poor quality, the coffee was dreadful and it wasn't worth the bother.

Overall, I could not see why anyone would stay here. There is a beautiful new hotel overlooking the harbour, right in the centre of Selinunte, surrounded by excellent restaurants and bars - The Admeto, which far outshines this hotel, for the same price. The admeto is a glass tower, each room having its own balcony overlooking the town, the Archeological Park or the harbour. Breakfast is served in the fourth floor dining room - all glass, or on the open air terrace, with as I say, stunning views.

Good vacations, next time we rent a car...

Patrick G on 28/10/2013 20:56

Hotel is charming and well located (countryside is great but hotel is a little isolated and a car is a must). Room was clean with safe and fridge, no complaint here! We had to suffer a singer right below our balcony the 2 first night and they moved him when he asked them.
Restaurant staff (especially Franscesca) has been wonderful and Giuseppe who drove us to and from the beach everyday was great.
We spent a great week there!
Only 1 point on which the hotel can really improve: French or English speaking at the reception is really limited. Except the manager, other reception staff doesn't speak fluently French or English (we looked for information on a travel to Palermo and got booked on a 75€ trip we didn't want). They even had to ask Franscesca from the restaurant to help translating. A piece of advice: if you need to change reception staff, think about Franscesca.
Finally, if you want to visit the country and you don't want to rent a car, you can take the bus to go to Castelvetrano (3 passages in the morning and 3 in the afternoon). From there you can take a bus to Palermo (around 20€ for a 2 ways trip for 2 people). Travel takes approximatively 1h30.

Cozy

MaggieCorn19 on 29/06/2013 17:23

Stayed here with a school group on a tour of Sicily and it was a clean cozy first stop after a long flight it was great for the short amount of time we were there but was a little out of the way for a longer trip. The staff was very hospitable as well.