The place can hardly boast a 5 star status when nobody on the hotel staff speaks English. I also tried some German, French, Russian, etc. Nothing helped. I had to learn some rudimentary Turkish to be able to eat and drink. All this would be "cute" if you were staying at nearby Alacati at one of those small charming hostels they have there and you were dealing with a mom-and-pop place for 50 bucks a night but I don't expect to learn a new language when I stay at a 5 star resort and pay close to $500/night It is impossible to get even basic level of service (let alobe 5 star level) when the staff doesn't have even a basic understanding of your needs - for example every time I'd go to the reception and give them my room number along with some basic request they would tell me no problem and proceed with calling my room (?)- that would be the only thing they'd understand - the room number. Once I was calling from my room asking for shampoo - I was put on hold while they were trying to call my room. It was a bit ridiculous. Very beautiful place, people are nice and the rooms are clean, the spa is also excellent, but don't go without a good understanding of the Turkish language. 99% of the guests are also Turkish so I am assuming they are just trying to keep foreign guests away or more likely they just grew too fast and can't meet the demand. Stay at the Sheraton or even better at Alacati.

I agree with a lot of the reviews that this hotel does cater to Turkish guests. It is a great hotel if you can speak Turkish. I beleive that the reason the staff comes across rude is because they can not speak English. I speak Turkish and the staff was very helpful and nice. Alacati is a must see. LIKES : beach,clean rooms, good food, great spa,nice pool, GREAT WEATHER (nice breeze all day) DISLIKES: very busy buffet (too crowded),they ran out of items in the buffet

This was our third hotel stay in a two week vaction in Turkey. Room was clean and fair sized. Compared to other places we stayed the reception staff here was very rude. They made no eye contact and did little to greet us or asssit during our stay. My husband does not speak Turkish and no attmept was made to communicate with him once they found out I spoke Turkish. The room was decent and the beach very clean. Dinner was very late (8pm) which often left us with indigestion. Maintenance staff were responsive and friendly however the rest of the staff needs some serious customer service training. No one thanked us for our patronage or asked about our stay when we checked out.We plan on retuning to the area but will not stay at this hotel

I have not even stayed at the ilica hotel and I need to write an awful review about them! The staff are the most unfriendly, unhelpful, unknowledgeable people I have ever had contact with. My complaint is not about the hotel amenitites or state of the rooms... simply the staff. I was brining over 20 guests to the hotel... lots of money... and I still couldn't get any service. If you want an opposite experience go to Altin Yunus. Same amenities, newly renovated and excellent staff. Ilica Hotel is a bad representation for Turkey.

Me and my girlfriend decided to book a last minute deal through our travel agent as we had a £200 travel voucher that we had to use by the end of September. What a disaster it turned out to be! When looking in the brouchure the hotel looks nice enough, the photos look good and they describe a range of facilities at the hotel so we though what they hell and booked it half board for something in the region of £750 for both of us (bearing in mind this was including the £200 voucher so it should have been £950). I think we got ripped off here as you will see shortly... As we arrived at the hotel we were the only couple to get off of the bus and it was in the middle of the night so there was only one guy standing behind the desk. He didn't speak much english but I did not think much of it because the majority of night staff in hotels in foreign countries do not speak english. Although he checked us in okay. We were later to find out that: - NONE OF THE STAFF IN THIS HOTEL SPEAK ENGLISH!!! If you are not Turkish you get treated like an outcast (dodgy looks, no service in restaurants, etc). The next day I rang Housekeeping to ask for an extra pillow but they did not speak english and told me to ring Reception. I rang Reception and asked for an extra pillow although I had to describe to them twice what a pillow was! After 30 mins no pillow came so I rang down again and asked a second time. Again no pillow came. Later on I actually went to the Reception desk and was told to rudely 'wait' while the girl served a Turkish guest even though I had been waiting far longer than the Turkish person! Finally a manager saw me and I had to explain to him what a pillow was finally about an hour later I got the extra pillow. In the Restaurant none of the food is marked so you don't know what anything is. The waiter's are rude and don't speak English - once when we went up to get our food the waiter came and took my girlfriends coke even though we had only been sat down for 5 minutes. When we asked him where it had gone he didn't understand us and offered us a menu you'd think he would understand the work COKE! The restaurant feels like an upmarket Butlins with plastic sheets covering the tables and just seems really really tacky. In the end we asked our rep (who by the way was only available by appointment) that we wanted to leave and that we were not prepared to stay in this place anymore. We later learned that we were the only 2 English people in the whole hotel and it had quite a few hundred rooms. I would only recommend this hotel if you are Turkish or are with someone who can speak Turkish otherwise please save your money and go elsewhere Cesme is too quiet and there is nothing to do there. We were moved to a different town called Kusadasi to a much better hotel with plenty of English speaking staff. Although you can prepare to get 2nd hand service if you are not Turkish in any part of Turkey.