Acanthus and Cennet Barut Collection

Hotel is very good, entertainment, restaurants, yoga class and Pilates, made by Derya, were fantastic!

This was our third consecutive year at the Acanthus and I would firstly say that the hotel is beautiful. The food is amongst the best I’ve ever had in a continental hotel and the staff are all incredibly friendly. But sadly it continues to let itself down in one area that is so unforgivable that I can’t continue to give it a 5 rating. There was also another issue that was hugely disappointing for what I consider to be a loyal customer. Firstly, the main issue I have had for the three years that I have been to the hotel is the drinks when you are at the bar downstairs watching the entertainment of an evening and also the little outdoor lounge where the entertainment continued after 10.00pm on some nights. There were three of us on the trip…me, my wife, and my 19 year old daughter. If I say that, between us, we had cause to return drinks on 50 separate occasions I wouldn’t be exaggerating. The reason..? The mixers. If we have a drink in the upstairs lounge - my drink of choice is vodka and coke, my wife’s is gin and tonic and my daughter is pink gin and sprite - we are given a nice iced glass with a slice of lemon and the mixer in an iced cold bottle. However, it seems that every time we are served a drink downstairs you can see as soon as it’s put on the table that the drink is flat. And on the occasions I’ve had to go to the bar personally rather than rely on telling the waiters (many of whom don’t understand what ‘flat’ actually means in relation to the drink) it’s clear why. On the majority of occasions the ‘mixers’ are being poured from large plastic bottles that are just left standing unopened in the metal trays which whilst still may be cold they will almost undoubtedly be flat. It’s not clear why they weren’t even using the ‘pumps’ that drinks are poured from in the afternoon if you sit at the bar and have a drink. This might sound like a minor gripe to many and if it was a one off I could understand it but when you are returning almost every drink you are given it becomes unacceptable, and is clearly not what I would expect from a 5 star hotel. I can understand the bar not wanting to give out bottles of mixers to sunbeds during the day for safety reasons but there should be no reason why a supply could not be available int he evenings. It’s not good enough. I would also say that the entertainment was not as good as previous years. In the past couple of years we have seen Michael Jackson and Madonna shows as well as Moulin Rouge. Sadly the Moulin Rouge show was showing on our app as being in the 19th June but it didn’t show until the day we left. The ‘Four Icons’ show was excellent but should have been on longer. Sadly this strange arrangement still exists where you have 45 minutes on the main stage and then have to scramble down to the lounge in the hope of getting a seat to see the next singer in an area where seating, by comparison, is very limited. The other disappointment on this particular trip related to our room. We had previously stayed in the side sea view and pool view room but for some reason I had made a mistake with our tour operator and only chosen the side sea view room. To be fair you can barely see the sea anyway because of the trees being in the way and these rooms just overlooked some residential flats….not a great view at all. But in advance of the trip I contacted the hotel and asked if there were any pool view rooms available. In advance of doing so I’d checked the Jet2 website and could see that if I’d booked the pool room view it would have been around £300 more expensive for the period we were there. But the hotel replied saying that there WAS availability but that it would cost me an extra 90Euros a night….just short of £900 for the period we were staying. They also offered me a family room which was around £3000 more expensive…! I declined and felt that they must be full and so were assuming they could fill any vacant rooms. However, when we arrived at reception I asked again if there were any pool view rooms available….and was told there were but it would be 90Euros a night..! For a loyal customer I thought this was extremely poor and it reflects badly on the hotel’s feeling towards me as a customer. The only difference to the hotel would have been us being in a different room….there was no extra food or drink involved. They simply weren’t prepared to offer us the room at anything close to what the brochure price would have been.

It has left a slightly bad taste with us and whilst I wouldn’t say it had put us off ever coming back it certainly won’t be for at least the next two years because we have already decided on alternative holidays. But the hotel really needs to address things like this, particularly the drinks, because it will be in danger of becoming complacent in what is already a very competitive market.

I did mention how brilliant the staff were and I want single out Hasan in the buffet area that had my orange juice and coffee ready for me every morning at 7am….and also Ali the towel man who made sure he laid all my towels out for me and set up my beds and umbrellas every morning. Brilliant service from both.