Charisma De Luxe Hotel - Kusadasi - Turkey

This hotel was the base for our 7 night tour. It is situated on the outskirts of Kusadasi – there are a few restaurants and shops in the immediate area but it is not too far to walk into town if you want more choice. Dolmus buses pass by the hotel at regular intervals if you prefer not to walk or the hotel can call you a taxi. We didn’t really like Kusadasi town itself, it’s a concrete jungle packed with carpet shops, Turkish delight sellers and Irish bars. The new looking Scala Nuova shopping centre at the port is worth going into to use the western style toilets, if nothing else.

The hotel has only been open for a few years and is still very modern and new looking. As we were there at a relatively quiet time of year, the staff were undertaking various bits of maintenance work around the hotel, but we didn’t find this too disruptive. The reception area is very light and airy and the lobby bar has lovely views over the sea. The restaurant also has lovely sea views, but it is really a bit too small and canteen-like for a 5 star hotel. The furniture is already pretty worn and there is not much room between tables. Both dinner and breakfast are served as buffets with drinks ordered from the waiters in the evening. We felt that the choice of cold food was very good (e.g. starters and desserts), but the hot food choice was rather restricted and repetitive, given the 5 star rating and 160 euro per night room rate. This may have been due to the time of year though, and it’s worth saying that we had no complaints about the quality. We did not eat in the hotel at lunchtime, preferring instead to go to the Antepli restaurant over the road which does great kebabs and baklava.

We were given a room at the far end of the annex block and were really pleased with it. Along with a balcony overlooking the sea, we also had large floor-ceiling windows in one corner which gave a lovely view of the sun setting each evening. We were slightly bemused by the large window between the bathroom and bedroom and were thankful for the integral blinds! We had some problems with the speaker in the bathroom making beeping noises, but this was fixed very promptly when we reported it to Reception. The reception staff were also very helpful when we had problems printing out our boarding passes for our return flight. There are still signs up stating that you should not bring food or drink into the hotel, but we had no problems smuggling in items in our rucksacks etc.

One thing which surprised us was that the hotel pool faces west, which meant that the area around the pool was in shade until mid morning (11am in April) and only in full sun after 3pm. The hotel has tried to counteract this with areas of decking nearer to the sea, but it is certainly possible that sun-worshippers might find this aspect of the hotel disappointing. It also means that the pool is very cold in the morning and the indoor pool is tiny so not really a substitute. We didn’t make use of the Wellness Centre (Sauna, Massage, Turkish Bath etc) but others in our group said it was good. There is also a small mini golf area which we enjoyed using. Overall, this is a really nice hotel and definitely a good base for visiting the surrounding area.

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