Otel Selen is not the best hotel in Marmaris but it is in a good location within easy walking distance of the beach (about 1 minute's walk, and that's at the snail pace of my wife). I would recommend room only or B&B because the food is adequate but not brilliant, and there are loads of restaurants and bars selling food at reasonable prices within easy walking distance. We stayed here on a B&B basis and we enjoyed the breakfasts, there was plenty to eat but it certainly won't be appearing in any Michelin guides any time soon.
The hotel is starting to show signs of wear and tear, air conditioning units tend to be fairly noisy and break down quite often. Ours was replaced the next day when it broke down. Some members of staff are more helpful and friendly than others, but a lot of these people are working 16 hour days during peak season and I do sympathise. Our room had a balcony and a sea view, but there was quite a lot of road noise.
At the time that we went to Turkey/Marmaris this was the best beach holiday that I had ever had, but having visited Greece/Corfu/Kavos in 2013 I thought that it would be interesting to compare the two, especially as the Greeks and the Turks seem to hate each other so much.
The PRs that try to entice you into restaurants and shops were a lot more persistent in Marmaris than the ones in Kavos were. There were also one or two unfortunate side effects, such as the bald PR of the beach-side bar that talked us into using their sunbeds and parasols (for free, as long as we were buying drinks at their bar). He added our teenage daughter as a friend on MSN and then made inappropriate comments to her of a sexual nature after she returned home to the UK, so quickly ended up being blocked from her MSN.
There were also one or two cultural clashes. In the UK shop workers tend to be seen as a fairly low status job, whereas some of the people working in the shops in the market in Marmaris seemed to have a very high opinion of themselves. Most of the challenges seemed to be with arabs, but we had a couple of situations where I was trying to haggle and they essentially tried to say that I was stupid. Needless to say, I bought my goods elsewhere if that happened. We didn't have any situations like that during our time in Greece, all the Greeks that we encountered haggled politely and with good grace, and plenty of good deals were struck accordingly.
We also had people in Marmaris that tried to offer us really stupid deals, which again didn't happen in Greece. One example was a man selling excursions that tried to convince me that I should buy an excursion for a year later, because he could “offer me a really good price”. Are people really gullible enough to do something like that?
There were plenty of charming people there as well, for example the old guy in the market that would brew up green tea for you and sit you down on stools for a chat whilst you tried out his fake designer fragrances. It seems to be a great place for gold and jewellery, too, as well as fake designer goods. Overall it was a lovely holiday, and we would certainly go back to Marmaris if we went back to Turkey, but we prefer the Greek people that we have met so far to the Turks that we have met so far. The Greek attitude to life seemed to be more laid back, somehow.
