We were visiting the hotel Sep 14-22 with a little kid (3.5 yo) and basically this review is to confirm positive opinions of others.
The check in was smooth and easy. We arrived early (by 11 am) and they checked us in and we got immediate access to everything except for the room. Initially we though we would have to wait till afternoon to get the keys. But they had a couple of rooms available in about 30 min after our check in. So we picked one and were transferred immediately after that.
There were 4 of us and because of the high price we still chose a room to accomodate 3 adults and a kid. It was not too small so it was kind of fine with us. The room was prepared and clean, the mini-bar was filled with drinks and water.
The bathroom was clean as well and they changed towels as often as we needed.
The only potential problem with the bathroom is the tub sides are kind of high and older/impaired people may need help to get in/out of it.
We were staying in one of the 3-story buildings relatively far from the sea and our windows were facing other buildings. But the planning is good so the buildings don't look at each other. The balconies in the buildings are facing the same side so you can only briefly see people coming in/out of their rooms (entrances).
As other people mentioned there are no elevators and only stairs to get to your room. This may help you decide if you absolutely need the ground level or not.
The room service is daily and good enough. But we didn't see any towel art from our room maid.
The beach is clean and spacious. There are always sun chairs available. Unlike our Egypt experience you can also always count on getting fresh beach towel. You can replace them any time though hotel is trying to 'go greener' and asks you to reuse your towel (like take it to your room and let it dry).
One thing I liked about the beach was the sun shades they're using above the sun chairs. That's really a good idea and allows for more space and more convenient protection (unlike straw shelters with solid shadow).
The sea was nice and clean the seabed is sandy. The water temperature was really great.
The only issue about the beach is it has a strip of pebbles. It is going along the water and actually goes into the first few feet (about 2 m or less) of water. It was making getting in/out of water a bit uncomfortable. I walked to another hotel's beach and found out they didn't have this issue (but the hotel/beach looked way cheaper than ours).
One advantage is the hotel has kids' pool (which we didn't really use) and a playground. The playground is shaded so you can go there with your kid any time of the day (it's designed for kids 3+ yo. Still it makes sense to supervise your kid while in it). The playground has high spaces for kids to climb up, slides, tunnels, sandbox, a see-saw. They don't have swing though.
The floor is new soft rubber-like multi-layer material so your kid won't get hurt even if going bare feet.
We were mostly interested in the sea. But could not miss the water slides one of the pools. My kid was too young and he could not swim anyway. But I took him to the spiral slide and he got a lot of excitement.
I didn't have any experience with water slides before. Probably I was doing something wrong but I got a few abrasions on my back (along the spine) and on my elbows while sliding down.
The seams on the slides seemed to be okay so I'm not sure what I did wrong. And other people seemed to be sliding down just fine.
Another amenity the hotel had was pretty big stage where they had nightly shows for kids (right after dinner, at 8:30? pm) and for adults (after 9 pm).
We were not really interested in those but brought our kid to one of them after dinner.
I can only say that the hotel's girls working with the kids did their best. My kid was not really interested/excited about what they did on the stage but that's personal.
A positive thing about the nightly shows is they're not too loud (compared to what we experienced in Mexico) AND they finish by 11? pm at the latest.
The restaurant building next to the main block is 2-stories. And it has a spa and a few souvenir/leather/jewelry shops. In my opinion those are too overpriced.
Another really expensive thing was Internet-cafe/entertainment center (where you could get a $3 coin for a toy car ride or a play booth. Those car rides cost me only 50 cents at Walmart).
The Internet access is also pretty expensive (it's like $12/hr or even more).
Not sure what they have in the main lobby but I saw a man with tablet in there. So you better check it out with hotel staff.
Unfortunately, there are no other options (except for your own wireless data plan with either insanely-priced data roaming or Turkish SIM-card which is not cheap either).
Now to the food: it's good. You have a good choice of meat, vegetables, side dishes. They have soups (for those who're interested. It's mostly puree-style soups though). They have smoked meat, fish, poultry, sausages etc.
For adults the food is real good. But a lot of kids were barely eating (including my one). Not sure if it was spices or just another style of cooking. But kids really didn't eat well.
We went to the hotel kind of 'out of season' so we didn't experience anything special in terms of fruits. They had: watermelons, melons, pears (not so ripe), apples, grapes, peaches (not ripe), plums (not ripe), bananas. Don't remember any berries.
Those tough enough to go there in June/July may have a lot of cherries (which I like) but we were there in September.
All the fresh squeezed juices were for extra money. All other juices were from carton packages (all from concentrate, I believe). I would really call them drinks. Anyway, they had orange/apple/peach/pineapple/grape flavors.
The desserts were also good but not something extraordinary. Some of them were Turkish style (which I personally was not excited about). I believe you should always have something to pick from.
One thing which I liked was natural honey with honeycombs... Those who like natural food will understand me.
We're not big fans of alcohol but we tried Turkish wines. Didn't really like them (though I saw couples who used to drink up a bottle for two at dinner time).
Surprisingly, they were serving Bailey's Irish Cream and Martini at no extra charge (though those were definitely imported). Anyway, their bartenders have a good choice of alcohol drinks and you just need to figure out what is included in the price and what's extra.
Restaurants are spacious and you always have a place to seat. The main restaurant has a choice of open air/terrace sitting and in-building tables. Some times they invite a local band to perform on the terrace at the dinner time. Very nice.
The waiters are pretty agile (especially when you tip them but they don't really insist on/seeking it. I saw that kind of behavior only one time when a guy doing small pizzas outside of the main restaurant asked me to put tip into the box.)
One thing about the 24-hours food availability: that depends on what you eat and what you don't. There is a 'dead hour' after 2 pm (or 3 pm? sorry, I don't remember exactly) when the only thing you can get is a drink from a bar and a doughnut (which I don't eat).
Can't really say anything about overnight restaurant hours and food as I didn't have a chance to eat too late/early.
The territory of the hotel is quite big and relatively green (though their palms still need a few years to grow up to give enough shadow). The hotel has kind of small 'zoo' with birds/rabbits in the back. You may see turtles roaming around on the grass and hummingbirds flying by the flowers.
The staff was generally knowledgeable/polite. But they're mostly Germany(?)-oriented. So, they may speak German fluently but not good at English at all (we had hard time to talk to our room service woman). There are also many Russian tourists so they picked up some Russian as well.
The animation team worked good. At least I saw them every day on the beach engaging people in activities and by the main pool where they entertained people.
The beach activities seemed to be repetitive though (same volleyball and some other game).
Not sure what was happening by the pool since we preferred beach all the time.
For the nightly shows they had rotated schedule and basically for the whole week we were staying there the shows didn't repeat.
Overall we enjoyed staying at this hotel. I would recommend it for those from Europe/Middle East/Russia though vacation in Turkey seems to be more expensive that one in Egypt.
And I would consider it way more expensive (at least for 40% higher) compared to the hotels in Mexico (Caribbean coast).
- Papillon Belvil Resort
- Hotel Papillon Belvil
- Papillon Belvil
- Papillon Belvil Turkey
