Holiday Village Turkey

I visited the Holiday Village Turkey the 15-25th of October for the 5th time and as always the hotel is clean and fresh and the staff are as friendly as ever! Special shout out to the lovely Seda & Gülay for always taking care of us ❤️

Travelled as a family of four (2 adults, 15 & 12 year old), stayed for one week from 15 - 22 October. We thoroughly enjoyed our stay and couldn’t fault the hotel in any way. It was also our first time at a completely All Inclusive Resort and to a Holiday Village. Check in at the hotel was quick and easy, our entire transfer was passengers from our flight and was only 20 minutes, spent longer waiting for bags than on the bus! We stayed in a Suite room on the ground floor overlooking Relax Pool 1, the room consisted of a lobby leading to a lounge area with 2 single beds, a bedroom to the side with a double bed and a bathroom, our balcony had a table and chairs and also had 2 stools and had a rack for drying clothes/towels on. The bathroom was large and our bath also had a jacuzzi built in which was a nice touch after a long day of sunbathing. Our room was cleaned to a high standard and we received a lovely a lovely towel decoration on the bed one day - a great surprise. We also had facilities for making tea and coffee which we never used and a safe too. Overall, the room was great and couldn’t fault it! There are 7+ pools so plenty of choice, a massive lagoon style pool is the centre of the resort with music and activities going on all day - quizzes, challenges and competitions etc. There’s also a pool with 4 slides and a small part roped off for the swimming lessons, the sides could do with a little more water running down them as they were often slow and you couldn’t get the whole way down some without stopping. There’s also a deeper pool with jacuzzis and 2 kids pools. We spend most of our time at on of three ‘Relax Pools’ these were much quieter than the main pools and were mostly empty. Even when we did spend time at the main pools we never struggled to get four sun beds together in the sun - don’t listen to any of the horror stories about running for sun beds at 4am, this is ridiculous as there are plenty to go around! The tiles by the pools are extremely slippy so do not run, one of our party broke their elbow due to this (no fault of the hotels - simply carelessness!) One of our party cut their leg in the step ladder out of pool requiring medical attention and a short trip to hospital, the reps, staff at doctors and interpreters were extremely helpful and helped to ease the stress during this particularly stressful time. Everyone is given towel cards upon checkin which can be exchanged for towels at the spa, the towels can then be changed every day which saved a lot of packing. The food at the hotel was simply amazing, everyone found something to eat for every single meal we loved the pancake lady and toasties down at the Chill Out Bar near the beach. A word of warning: DO NOT USE THE A LA CARTE! You need to chose everything from the menu before you go and children are only given one course whilst adults have four, we were disappointed as we paid an adults price for a 15 year old who was given child’s menu! The food was barley edible and we almost went downstairs for the buffet. There was also ice cream hut available for a few hours a day. The staff were all very helpful and were (a bit too) eager to refill glasses and offer assistance, a real credit to the hotel! The entertainment was fantastic, all run by a British team from First Choice, we mainly watched the adult entertainment at the activity bar with the hilarious Cree and James, they both went above and beyond to give us a great time. The pantomime on Wednesday night was also great too, really funny too. The entire team were amazing and did not falter, even at such a late stage in the season. Unfortunately we found that there was little to do for older kids with only one daytime session running per day for the Escape club - we didn’t utilise this due to the timings and also we were misinformed as we didn’t realise kids couldn’t just turn up. There were numerous bars around the complex, staff were using bottles of fizzy juice instead of the pumps which was great and there were also slushes and various alcoholic drinks too - all quite strong. The grounds of the hotel were immaculate and the complex was extremely spacious, in the main building there were also amusements, bowling, the spa, indoor pool, a few shops as well as the main buffet restaurant and the a la carte restaurants. The village of Sarigerme is only 5 minutes away and only 15 lira in a taxi. It’s very small with only one small street and a few shops, bought a few ‘genuine fakes’ from the shops, the people are all very kind and could not be more helpful. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to do and day trips so we cannot comment on any of them. We did do parasailing which was an breathtaking experience which we would recommend. The beach was nice however it was a bit dirty during our stay with some litter - this could be due to the end of season. It was very quiet and relaxing though. The beach was pebbly and got deep very quickly so come prepared. Check out was easy and the staff waved us off a nice touch at the end of the holiday. The staff were all wonderful and very helpful - all spoke great English and were delighted when we attempted to speak a little Turkish. Unlike others, we saw no issue with any other guests and they had no impact on our stay. There were a lot of mosquitoes around and we were all bitten several times, think this was due to the storm a few weeks prior unsettling the mosquitoes. Tip: don’t bother with any sprays from the UK, get one of the local sprays from the village that really work - we used ‘OFF!’ Overall we thoroughly enjoyed our stay at the Holiday Village Turkey. Unfortunately, we would not return due to the hotel being isolated with nothing around it which did not suit our family - no faults with the hotel at all. This was also our first time to a HV, we probably won’t return to another HV as we didn’t really take advantage of any of the headline HV features compared to other hotels. We would not return to Sarigerme as it was too isolated however we will certainly return to Turkey, it’s a beautiful country with great friendly people - don’t worry about safety, it’s in the middle of nowhere and there’s no reason to worry! We had a great time at HV Turkey, the staff and rep team were amazing and would go to the ends of the earth for you. We would definitely recommend if you want a great time in the sun and don’t want to leave the hotel, if you like to go for days out and leave the hotel - it might not be for you.

10 of us in total stayed for 7 nights in Mid October and thought it was fantastic. I think that the reviewers who are criticing the food and particularly those who criticise lack of choice and an absolute joke. We thought the food was excellent, ok you can't get a full english breakfast but what do you expect when you visit a muslim country ? The choice was endless, yes there was chips always on offer (as others have said) but there will be some children (and adults) that want chips twice a day every day so they are simply catering for their requirements. Put yourself in their shoes, do you think that you could manage to cover so many different options and personal preferences. We ate in the Turkish a-la-carte and the food was also great, very good service also. We also ate in the Italian a-la-carte, personally i would avoid this as the food was rubbish (worst meal of the week) and not very italian, when you order a steak and do not get asked how you would like it cooking it is a bad sign! We enjoyed it so much that we have already booked for next year, only 49 weeks to go!! Personally i think that this hotel has everything that you could need and more. My only criticism would be the mosquitos, however i understand that there was storms before we went and this brought them into the area. A couple of evenings the hotel was out with vehicles spraying to try and reduce the number of mosquitos.