The GRAND PARK KEMER hotel is in the lovely village of Beldibi, not far from Kemer — in fact, at the other end of the village from Club Hotel Belpinar, where we began our travels.
The hotel is understated: moderately pretty, moderately quiet, moderately inconspicuous.
Check-in at the GRAND PARK KEMER went quickly; the safe turned out to cost $2 a day. The receptionist told us that the person showing us to our room would explain how to use the safe. When we got to the room, the staff member showed us the room, the bathroom (which hadn’t been cleaned), the wardrobe and the safe, which was locked. We asked how to open and use it, and he told us it was a paid service. We showed him the receipt for the safe, he said “OK” and simply left. “Just great,” I thought. After dinner we went back to reception to find out how to use and open the safe, and also asked for a housekeeper to clean the room after all, since it hadn’t been cleaned. We went back to the room and waited. After a while a man came and fiddled with the safe for 20 minutes, then another man came who did manage to open it and show us how to use it.
A little later the housekeeper came, and we smoothly moved on to the subject of cleaning the room. The housekeeper brought a towel and was surprised at our silent question: why would we need towels if the room is dirty, and we hadn’t even used the towels yet and didn’t need them at the moment. The housekeeper left and came back 10 minutes later to clean the room. She did something in the bathroom briefly and then left. Someone else’s hair, a puddle on the floor and drops on the mirrors remained in the bathroom. Throughout our entire holiday the room was never swept: hair, sand, sweet wrappers and other rubbish — both ours and the previous guests’ — just stayed there. The bed linen was changed probably once, maybe twice in 7 days. Towels weren’t changed at all — even the bath mat lying on the floor wasn’t changed, it wasn’t even picked up. Beach towels are handed out from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and collected in the evening. And one more little thing: the towels, both in the room and on the beach, reeked so much of some kind of chemical that it was scary to think what they do to them for a towel not to lose its stench over 8 days without being changed. I don’t remember the minibar — if there was one, it was empty.
The room turned out to be on the ground floor of the second, non-main building. It faced the sea, but because of the water slides you could hardly see the sea. The room was a two-room one, but one door had been locked and the second room turned into a separate room, where other people had also been put. This was very inconvenient, since through that door you could hear everything, down to the sound of teeth being brushed. Soundproofing: none. From the forest and mountains, the crickets were very loud in August. In the room: a double bed, air conditioning and a wardrobe with a safe; in the bathroom, a shower, a toilet and toiletries that smelled the same as the towels. There were slippers too, but we didn’t use them. Also, because the room had been split in two, there was simply nowhere to put a suitcase to get things out of it. The air conditioning cooled poorly, and on the last day of our holiday it started leaking. Wi-Fi is mediocre, doesn’t reach the whole grounds and is very slow. Since the room was on the ground floor, we shared a terrace with 2 chairs with the neighbouring “room” made from the second room — and those chairs served as our drying rack, since there was nowhere else.
The staff: 50/50. I really liked the bartender: he always made tasty cocktails, and if a queue formed at the bar, he sped up so that within half a minute there was no queue — without the quality of the drinks suffering. The bar had quite a large choice of cocktails; we didn’t even manage to try them all during our holiday. At reception we tried to order a packed lunch before an excursion; the receptionist spent a long time explaining that we needed to go to the service desk, although a couple of days earlier they had arranged it for us right at reception. At the service desk the person was surprised and sent us back to reception. There we went to a young man who arranged everything in a minute. Housekeeping, given the lack of proper cleaning: a score of 1. I’ll describe the entertainment a bit further on.
Food. As in all the Turkish hotels I’ve stayed in, the buffet food is so-so. The GRAND PARK KEMER was no exception. It’s fairly varied, but the fish isn’t cooked very well. Of the 6 kinds of fish served during our holiday, we liked the smoked mackerel and the grilled bream on Turkish Night — which was left on the table the next day and offered again; we didn’t dare take it a second time. We also liked a salad made with tinned fish, something like tuna in oil. The meat was always very overdried, with the exception of a lamb steak once. There was quite a big choice of salads, but none of them were labelled, and most weren’t tasty — especially the mayonnaise ones; the Olivier salad was simply awful. We liked the potatoes, but they’re tasty almost everywhere. The fruit and melon were also tasty, the bread and pastries were perfect, and the desserts were tasty but very sweet — tooth-achingly so. And of course there were tasty platters of various cheeses. For breakfast, as in other hotels, there were usually vegetables, fruit, ordinary tasty sunny-side-up eggs, sliced cheeses and sausage (not tasty) and sweets.
The grounds aren’t very big, but quite beautiful: 1 big pool, 1 paddling pool, 1 pool with 2 slides. A beach with fine pebbles, an amphitheatre where the evening entertainment takes place, several bars, several à la carte restaurants and the main restaurant.
Location: the GRAND PARK KEMER is located by the main road, the very last hotel in the village of Beldibi. Not far away there’s a supermarket, and next to it an ATM and a local travel agency where we booked excursions, which I’ll tell you about in a separate article.
Entertainment and activities. During the day, two girls run children’s exercises, then the head of entertainment runs water polo, pool exercises for adults, darts, volleyball and perhaps something else I’ve missed. The evening entertainment, as I understand it, is hired in, because the groups of entertainers changed every day. This has its pros and cons. Sometimes really great, fiery performers come who simply amaze you with their professionalism. Sometimes less professional ones come, but they try very hard, and you can see they love what they do, and it turns out really well. But sometimes the ones who come are very disappointing. For example, on a big night that happens twice a month at the hotel — “Turkish Night” — the evening entertainment was very disappointing: gloomy, they couldn’t dance, and the show was very boring. I’d so wanted to be at the hotel for this event, but I didn’t expect such dreariness… But as I said, some are simply superb: there was a group of performers with a “Salsa” programme — fiery guys, simply excellent — and I also really liked a group of gymnast performers; the whole hotel applauded, their show drew the biggest crowd, and I watched it with great pleasure.
If you compare this GRAND PARK KEMER hotel with CLUB HOTEL BELPINAR, where we stayed the first time, and the Side Prenses Resort, where we stayed the last time, this hotel comes last.
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