Hotel itself is beautiful, but not quite a 5-star stay for me
This was my first All Inclusive holiday. I usually tend to travel for city trips and prefer to stay in smaller places, my budget often not reaching more than Hampton by Hilton type of establishments. Clean, quiet, conveniently located, but not totally breaking the bank. However, it had been a busy few months and I wanted to see what the fuss was about.
I have no comparison, but from what I gather this hotel definitely seems to cater for the All Inclusive crowd well. It does look like the photos and I did enjoy my stay and it definitely made me consider doing this more often, but I did have an issue or few with my stay that despite this don’t make it a definite yes to come again. But again, I am not the target audience for this type of thing anyway.
There wasn’t any recent reviews & I read them religiously before my holidays, so the following is quite long and probably mostly for people like me.
LOCATION
Firstly, the hotel isn’t exactly in what is considered Kemer, but Kiriš, which is about a 10 minute drive away. As it’s an AI holiday, you’re probably not looking to venture out much, but if you are then there’s really nothing much nearby. Just a “shopping street” (if you can call it that) of more of the same local stuff and you can’t walk 5 steps without someone hounding you. There’s a bus service (25 lira) to actual Kemer and it supposedly runs every 20-30 minutes, but we never saw a timetable. From Kemer you can get more transport, including to Antalya. We ended up not using this, but supposedly this one runs less frequently, takes you to the coach station and costs about 75 lira. From the coach station you would then need to get a tram to get to the airport. This is to say that it’s considerably easier to get a taxi which takes about an hour and will set you back around 50 eur, which is reasonable if there’s at least two of you, but kind of steep for a solo traveller. Despite the Expedia message, the hotel doesn’t actually appear to provide a transfer service.
HOTEL
By all accounts the hotel itself is lovely. Definitely recently refurbed and looks exactly like the photos. The area is massive and even without leaving the premises I managed to get my step count over 5000 without even trying. There’s two large pools, waterslides, a private beach as well as a deck on the sea all life guarded, several cafes, almost a 24/7 food service, what appears to be a million staff, nightly entertainment, daily activities, doctors, gym, couple of shops etc. Everything I would image an all inclusive hotel probably should have.
Everything is clean, they even wash the walkways at night, glasses and rubbish are picked up regularly etc. You can tell thought has gone into the refurb - a clock tower you can see from everywhere, a little tray for your phone in the bathroom, entering the sea from the pier to avoid rocks etc. Something they have no photos of or fail to advertise is that they actually have a pretty decent gym for a hotel - big, airy and new equipment, towels are also provided. There’s not much equipment, but a basic workout can be done.
THE ROOM
There appears to be an old (taller, bigger) building and several new smaller ones. There’s no difference upon booking (deluxe or something), so I’m not sure how those are allocated, but the rooms in the old building do look same size, but are not as modern. We were in the new 8000 building, which is probably the quietest/furthest away from noise if I had to guess. The room is also lovely and looks exactly like the photos. Bed was soft, bedding was acceptable. There were several sockets, including USB ones, a hair dryer, a kettle with tea, multiple hygiene bits and bobs in the bathroom, a minibar (free to use, though we never did, so can’t comment on restocking) and what is nice is that you can choose to have your room cleaned or not via a button and if you choose neither, they just restock the toiletries. A/C could be loud depending on the level, but didn’t make any old rattling noises and did cool the room, but I did have some issues with it (see below). TV is useless - info channels change to quickly, freeze button didn’t work and the rest is in Turkish. No Netflix.
ENTERTAINMENT/ANIMATION
I’m not really the target audience for either, but there’s seemed to be quite a bit.. however this info was mostly available on the app, which at least on Android phones, did not work. Entertainment changes daily - there were concerts, talent shows, dance shows and I even saw a circus advertised and there is a proper stage and sound equipment, definitely more so than I’d except from a hotel.
FOOD/DRINK
There is plenty of food almost 24/7 and there are a million options ranging from local stuff, to pastas, to chinese to fish to meat and it does vary a little every day. However, most of it is entirely bland and really quite greasy. There were some days where it was a little better, but most days we struggled. Same for cakes - million different looking ones, but all tasted the same. Couldn’t even tell you what of. Just general sweet. We actually found the ‘snack bar’ to have far better quality that official meal times. There’s a decent enough coffee machine and coke drinks in the lounge bar and the ‘patisserie’ for those who care for coffee.
STAFF
Most of them were lovely, polite, always on top of their tasks and that’s already more than I would usually care for in a hotel. However we did spend more time in this one than we would regularly and it was also our first AI experience, so we didn’t exactly know what to expect, particularly as the app didn’t help us out either. The absolute biggest issue with this place is that the staff seems to almost exclusively only speak Turkish. One of us spoke fluent English, the other passable English and Russian and we were constantly left confused. Some staff did manage passable level Russian, but almost none of them spoke ANY English. I’d read this in the reviews and thought this cannot be real, but truly, even things like please and thank you they often only understood via body language. Everytime we were greeted it was always in Russian and even if we asked a question in English, they’d still respond in Russian or body language. If you truly had an issue, there’s no way that could get resolved.
OTHER ISSUES
The app doesn’t work on an Android, so you have no idea what’s going on
The A/C works, but seems to be set up wrong (date and time included). We only got it to work if we set the temp to much lower than we actually wanted it.
They can’t do much about the sea, but they do boast two massive pools, which are not getting almost any use (early May) because of how cold they are.
Russians. Not the hotels fault and probably a Turkey-wide thing, but they are a breed of their own. Growing up in the ‘old Eastern block’ this wasn’t news to me, but hard to avoid in such amounts. It’ll be things like just cutting in line, breathing down your neck with no personal space, bringing out own speakers to the lounger area, absolutely no regard for others keeping their voice down, including in the middle of the night in sleeping areas. As I’m writing this in one of the cafes, a 10-year-old has just launched a sandal in my general direction, but no parental figure is to be seen.
Walls/doors are not soundproof. We could hear the lift (which talks), the people in the corridor (most of them loud) and our neighbours quite clearly. Cleaners didn’t start early in our block every day, but when they did, you could definitely hear them as well your neighbouring doorbell.
A finally, but most importantly to our party - if you’re looking for peace and quiet, this isn’t the place for you. From about 11 onward if not earlier they blast the speakers at the pools, which are in the middle of the ground, so you can’t avoid it. This goes on until about 17 at which point the evening entertainment is starting their soundcheck and the event itself starts around 9ish and goes on until midnight. It’s unavoidably loud, even with your balcony door closed. The only solace from this is the beach area, but you are then dealing with passing boats and other sea entertainment, not to mention the previously mentioned Russians. The neighbouring hotel’s beach wasn’t ready, so we also had to add a tractor to this list. Reading a book, having a home office or just thinking your thoughts in peace is near impossible
All this said, the hotel IS lovely and I wouldn’t not recommend it, but there were just too many things for me that didn’t make it quite a 5-star stay.
Modern hotel with great facilities, just a few issues. Would return.
Just returned from a week at the Swandor Kemer, all in all we had a great week. The hotel is modern & well dressed.
The rooms are spacious, beds comfy, plenty of wardrobe space, mini bar which is refreshed daily with the basic soft drinks & linens and toiletries available.
The drinks are of great quality with branded spirits on offer, the patisserie is a great addition to the hotel open from around 2.30pm serving excellent quality patisseries & barista made coffee along with ice-creams.
The main restaurant has a massive selection of foods for each service, even the pickiest of eater would be fine. The coffee machines are a bit of a let down, they often don’t dispense the correct amount of coffee, or they don’t dispense milk, after three days of messing around i gave up and waited while after breakfast for a coffee around the pool.
My only annoyance with the food was the temperature, almost everything was cool, unless you managed to get something that was freshly cooked, this is surprising given the new hot holding equipment within the buffet areas. This is an area i worry about as i work in food hygiene (I avoided high risk foods).
The pool area is a great size, the sun loungers are comfy and we never had an issue getting one, only issue around the pool was the music, it was VERY loud all day long.
The entertainment is brilliant, theres a show every night in the main arena, then a band/ group on afterwards, theres an open air night club which i think opened twice a week, great addition!
Another great feature is the checkout lounge. We didn’t have to check out while 12pm but our transfer wasn’t while 7.15pm. The hotel had a great checkout lounge with luggage storage and shower/ changing facilities you can use right up until departure.
The hotel was great, theres a bit of something for everyone, as mentioned the only thing that let it down for me was the loud music in the day and the cold food.
This however would not put me off visiting again, i left happy.
4.5 (682) atsauksmes 
