Hotel Semeli

I am so confused by the endless good reviews for this hotel. In my experience it’s extremely underwhelming and poor value. We had to change accommodation at very short notice as our hotel decided to close for the season and booked Semeli in a bit of a panic based on the positive reviews. The location is very convenient if you want to be able to walk into town and the staff are charming but that’s the extent of the positives. I realised quickly after we checked in that this hotel is partnered with Tui and a lot of guests are on package holidays. I think this is the reason for the extreme variance in expectations. We travel to Mýkonos for luxury stays with unrivalled service. This is not the hotel for that type of trip but the prices we paid created that expectation. I won’t go into the endless boring inconveniences we encountered when we were there but in general it felt a bit cheap..... sun loungers all reserved before 9am, a continuous shortage of pool towels, the breakfast is poor and lots of things are extra or simply unavailable (for example, you can’t have spinach in your omelette at breakfast but you can buy a spinach salad at lunch??, juices are concentrate, no a la carte options etc) and rooms are tired. This is not a 5 star hotel. It’s probably good value on a package holiday but if you’re used to staying in luxury independent hotels in Mykonos avoid this place!

How can I describe and rate my summer home! The one and only paradise on Earth , Mykonos wont be Mykonos if I don’t stay at semeli and spend most of my time zith the loveliest staff of semeli hotel ! All winter we count days for summer to come to go back to semeli and spend my summer days chill by the pool and have the best drinks and food by the pool Cant wait for summer 2021 , my 7th summer at semeli !

We stayed as a family of two adults and two teens in a Garden Suite with pool for six nights after visiting Santorini. On arrival, we were told we had been upgraded to a two bed suite with pool view, which I thought was amazing at first! Having seen the room, it had a hot tub inside (which we wouldn’t have used) and my daughters would have had to share a double bed. The main pool was right outside the room and it was very small with not many sun beds. I know they usually have more but there are less because of Covid. The reason I booked the Garden Suite was because the hot tub was outside and it was more like a miniature pool. We also had our own sun loungers. The one room also had two single beds so that my daughters didn’t have to share. Therefore, this suited our needs much better. The two bedrooms had their own bathrooms with excellent showers and the toiletries were nice. I booked through Booking.com and it states on there that you get a kettle in your room. This wasn’t the case for us. The restaurant was ok but some of the staff were quite stand-offish. At breakfast, there were several occasions where we had to ask for coffee or we would order it and it never arrived. It seemed like they were short staffed as tables were quite often not made up or cleared. One waiter (man with curly hair) was the most professional and seemed at times (in the evenings) to be the only one doing any work whilst others were more interested in their phones. Location wise, the hotel is very central and it is a short walk to bars, restaurants and shops. Mykonos is extremely over priced for drinks, meals etc. It actually makes Dubai look reasonable! To us, the hotel lacked certain 5* aspects especially when you are paying high prices so we wouldn’t go back. We also felt it is more suitable for young couples.