The Selenza is a beautiful hotel in every way; It is only about 2 years old, is entirely modern in design and beautifully laid out; the only BUT is the location; The Costa del Sol is a highly developed area and not to everyone's taste; The Selenza is quite close to a busy road and you need a car if you want to explore the area, there is nowhere to go for a stroll in the evenings for instance, but if you have a hire car you would be OK to go places; BUT if you want a relaxing Spa break and do not intend to stray far from the hotel for a few days the Selenza is the place to be; Included in the room rate is access to the Thalasso Wellness Spa, you put on your gown and flip flops and take the lift from your room down to the Spa, where the friendly staff show you the ropes; The Spa area is really impressive, there is a lovely 'dry' area all set out with futons and beautifully decorated; Inside the Spa there is a 10-point circuit consisting of salt water pools with jacuzzis, water jets & water beds, showers, sauna, steam baths, ice rubs, bucket shower, etc. you can use this for up to 2 hours a day in with the room rate; At extra cost there are a host of beauty therapies, facials, massages etc. to choose from; Foodwise - There is a restaurant, the Dulcamara, where the food is haute cuisine so the portions are quite small, but the food is excellent and the service is good; the alternative is the Bar where you can order hot snacks; Room rate includes a lavish buffet breakfast, the breakfast room is light and airy and includes a lovely conservatory; There is a beautifully landscaped outside pool. The rooms are spacious with huge comfy bed, balcony, pillow menu where you can order a pillow from 4 options; We had 3 days here and felt really relaxed at the end, there is also free access to the internet. We found the (young) staff really helpful and friendly; If you do not hire a car, there are regular local buses into nearby Estepona town which has a lovely harbour and is interesting to look around; When you come out of the Selenza, cross the road and take the footpath to the right to the bottom of the footbridge and there is a bus stop there, Line 27, which takes you to Estepona bus station;

1. Near a building site, it means really really noisy: not relaxing at all

2. Bad food and expensive restaurant, just the breakfast was OK

3. Reception staff not friendly at all

4. Our room wasn't ready when we arrived (and we booked 3 weeks in advance!!!)

5. Didn't change the sheets for 3 days!!!

6. Treatment really expensive!

NOT A 4 star hotel, but surely a 2 star.

Fantastic Spa with many facilities. Just as beautiful as the hotel website showed! Clean rooms and great food. Breakfast was excellent. The staff is very friendly and helpful. The hotel is in a building construction area. Fortunately the building activities do not start early in the morning.

In summary;

Great hotel. Fantastic gym and spa (included in room rate!). Shame about the location. Close to main road. Worrying construction works nearby. Service is a bit slow. Wouldn’t rush back.

We stayed 6 nights at the Hotel Selenza Thalasso in early Sept 2006, booked though Expedia

Location:
The hotel location was a real disappointment for us. Firstly the hotel is quite remote for restaurant, bars, shops or any nightlife. If you want to walk for dinner don’t stay here. I can’t comment on the hotel restaurant as we didn’t eat there. Instead we always used the hire-car to go out to eat. Puerto Banus is only a 10 mins drive and has lots of restaurants.

The hotel is only a hundred yards from a major duel-carriageway road. However a big waterfall fountain in the swimming pool drowns out any real traffic noise, so the road wasn’t an audible problem. It was however an eyesore from the upper floors.

The 15 minute walk to the beach takes you across a road bridge with no proper footpath, so be very careful jumping the barriers and dodging the cars. The sandy beach is clean and quiet, but we stayed by the swimming pool most days.

Building work! The hotel is located between two construction sites. On one side was a complex of nearly finished villas, I guess they may take another few months to complete. More worrying is the rear of the hotel where a new plot was just being started, with large diggers preparing the ground for what looks like several hundreds new villas. To be honest none of these works disrupted our stay, but I would not return to this hotel until all this work is finished, it’s too risky that you might be staying in the middle of a building site.

Hotel:
The hotel is lovely. It only opened in Sept 2005, so everything is lovely and new, and clean. Reception is full of white marble, with a glass lift which is very cool. Free internet in the reception is good too. The first bedroom we were put in was a smoking room, even though we has requested non-smoking, so we asked to change. Our second room was better. Rooms are a good size, very clean, flat TV, great bathroom, comfy twin-beds, air-con, safe, everything you should expect. And nothing to complain about.

The pool area is very nice too with its strange shape pool, with plenty of good quality sun beds and fresh towels from the attendant.

The buffet breakfast in the hotel was excellent, a continental selection with most things you would want. Service at breakfast was a bit slow bringing coffee, and clearing tables.

Now the best bit. The Spa. My girlfriend is more into this than I am but the spa and gym are brilliant. The gym has a good selection of top spec kit and free-weights. Then the spa has water-jet pools, jets, and steam and sauna rooms. If you’ve been to a Thalasso (spa) centre before you will know what these are like. The spa did get busy at peak times, but I was amazed that this was include in the room rate, so we used it everyday.

So once again in summary.
Great hotel. Fantastic gym and spa (included in room rate!). Shame about the location. Need a car. Close to main road. Worrying construction works nearby. Service a bit slow. Wouldn’t go back.