Blue Wave Suite Hotel - All Inclusive

We've stayed three years running, and it remains good value for families: spacious rooms, lots of food and a brilliant beach. The hotel isn't luxury, but it's honest and reliable, and gets better each year. Thanks to the animation team, Ismail, Sasha, Atakan and Eray, reception's Tatjana, the beach crew Mustafa, Isaak and Pana, and the restaurant staff, especially the Gözleme, Marina and Aysegul ladies. They all make the stay better. A good budget choice that delivers what it promises.

The worst part was being made to sign a statement saying we were “satisfied with the service” before getting the keys to our new room, even though we'd made our dissatisfaction clear. This was after reception called at 8:45 AM, demanding we move rooms immediately, just a couple of hours after we finally got to sleep around 6 AM. We'd arrived at 4 AM with our one-year-old and three-year-old after a delayed flight. The hotel couldn't find our booking for over an hour while we stood at reception with two exhausted, crying children. We'd requested a baby bed ahead of time, and the hotel advertises a “BABY CONCEPT” program, but no bed was provided and staff didn't know where to find one. Our one-year-old had to sleep unsafely in an adult bed. The room had one roll of toilet paper, no towels, and no drinking water for our baby's night bottle. For a hotel marketed as a family place with facilities for young children, this was an absolute nightmare. Do NOT book here with small children.

It's a lively, animated hotel, and the internet even works well on the beach. The food was fresh with plenty of variety. The room layout was odd, but manageable. Ours was a terrible place to sleep early because the disco was very loud until 11 PM.

We spent a whole day of our week's stay packing, moving our things, cleaning the room and chasing room service for soap and towels. It felt like a punishment after paying so much, not a vacation. Our first room in the main building had a sticky floor and a bathroom that stank of urine and hadn't been cleaned. We were left to throw out the previous guests' rubbish ourselves. Even after asking reception twice, nobody mopped the floor. We asked to change rooms but were told there was no “free time.” The room was above the theater, so the outdoor program kept us awake. After four days and about five hours of sleep, we moved to another old building. It was quiet in the morning, but at night there was street disco noise and the air conditioner humming on the roof, so that was even more disappointing. We couldn't leave cosmetics in the room because they would be ruined, so we had to keep everything like that in the fridge. There was mold, lipstick-stained dirty towels, and the room was overheated. There weren't enough towels for the number of guests, and the bathroom had no soap. Only hot water ran for 15 minutes, so showering wasn't possible. Reception staff were completely unprofessional. Some were arrogant, others stared at their phones, and nobody even said sorry.