Trendy Aspendos

We’ve just come to the end of a stay at Trendy Aspendos. We booked relatively late and had quite specific requirements, particularly around the room, which limited our options. We were torn between two hotels and, after speaking to TUI, were advised against the other one because it was operated by TUI Deutschland. I’m not sure this hotel felt particularly different in that respect!

We travelled with two teenagers and needed a room with a separate sleeping area for them, with two proper beds rather than pull-out sofas. For anyone travelling with younger children, be prepared for the challenge of finding hotels that offer this when they grow up!

Our room was in Block 1, which was a reasonable walk from the main areas and was lovely and peaceful. The room itself was exactly what we needed.

We did report that the drains were extremely slow, but unfortunately nothing was done about it, so we just had to take a mid break during our showers. The air conditioning did work, despite some other reviews suggesting otherwise. It wasn’t brilliant, but it was sufficient. The fridge was stocked with water and soft drinks and replenished throughout our stay as part of the All Inclusive.

There was a good selection of food in the main buffet restaurant, although some evenings were better than others. However, it was absolute carnage in there! I’ve never experienced an All Inclusive restaurant quite like it.

If you struggle with crowds or anxiety, we found around 8:10pm to be noticeably quieter. Breakfast was similar, although much calmer before 8:30am.

The Side restaurant for lunch was very warm, with fairly repetitive food and, again, quite chaotic. We preferred the snack bar and beach bar for lunch, which were much more relaxed, although outdoors, so very warm.

The coffee shop serving coffees, cakes and macarons was fabulous, and the ice cream parlour was in a great location with a really good variety — particularly good for an All Inclusive hotel.

One thing that I thought was great was that there were a number of fridges dotted around stocked with bottled water. We probably would have ended up dehydrated without them!

The evening entertainment was generally quite good. The shows in the amphitheatre were enjoyable, although the seating wasn’t particularly comfortable. There were also some singers who, quite frankly, weren’t very good — including some who appeared to be pretending to play instruments!

All of the evening entertainment was outside and, with the humidity at night, we often escaped to the quieter indoor bars for some air conditioning.

The entertainment team worked very hard during the day and there was lots going on which we enjoyed watching. It is very noisy so if you want a peaceful trip, this is not the place for you.

When we first arrived, we were slightly intimidated by the ratio of German to English guests. The first night felt like a bit of a dance-off between the two nations, which was uncomfortable to watch, although thankfully this seemed to be a one-off.

An issue for me throughout the holiday was passive smoking. Whether around the sunbeds during the day or watching the entertainment in the evening, there always seemed to be someone smoking next to us. As a non-smoker in the UK, I think you take smoke-free spaces for granted, and this simply wasn’t the case here. On a few evenings, we ended up leaving areas earlier than we would have liked because of it.

The biggest frustration was the availability of sunbeds around the pool.

We came on this holiday to relax and recharge after a challenging year, but a 6am alarm was needed to secure a pool sunbed. Most people appeared to reserve them, go back to bed and not return until lunchtime. Unfortunately, the hotel doesn’t seem to do anything about this.

We had a couple of lie-ins and went to the beach instead, where it was much easier to find a sunbed later in the morning. The beach is nice but be prepared for the hot sand! The sea is nice once you get in, but rocks are a challenge to cross.

It was a shame the cabanas were at the beach rather than around the pool, as I would happily have paid to avoid the daily hassle. There are also some grassed areas with additional beds, although personally I don’t like walking across grass with wet feet!

I do think there is an opportunity to improve the layout around the pool and water slides. The slides felt quite disconnected from the main pool area and the grassed section could potentially be redesigned to make better use of the space.

Overall, Trendy Aspendos is a bit of a mixed bag. There were definitely things that frustrated us, but we worked around them and still enjoyed our time.

I would definitely recommend booking a Turkish bath and massage during your stay. A special shout-out to Mustafa, who was always incredibly pleasant and made a point of saying hello to us every day.

As for the rest of the staff, it was mixed. Some were genuinely lovely and helpful, while others were noticeably rude.

Would I return? No. We had a good holiday, but there are definitely areas where I think the hotel could do better. That being said I fully understand that everyone has different requirements and enjoy different things.

We have just had 2 weeks at this hotel. The hotel is clean as you would expect. The air con in rooms is poor and changing the temperature has little if any impact. Rooms are tidy and well kept but not necessarily what you might expect in a 5* hotel. The food is reasonable. As with all buffet style restaurants the chefs work hard to keep on top of replenishments but some offerings were luke warm and at times it was extremely busy and the waiters were not particularly quick with drinks orders, despite trying their best. Variety was good, some tasty dishes, some less so, but something for most people. The entertainment is very focussed upon other nationalities and our children struggled to understand what was being said. However that is more of an observation than a criticism. The hotel was very full with a mix of German, Russian, Polish and a minimal number of British guests, but we did see one British lady in a fuming argument with another overseas guest around the pool. The staff did little to intervene and it was unpleasant, definitely not what you want children to witness. The sunbeds are a disaster. If you are not up by 5:30am you will not get a poolside sunbed, which if you have small children who you wish to watch in the pool, is not ideal. There are signs to warn against and removal of towels is claimed that it will happen, but simply it does not. I have never seen anything as bad in all my years of travel as the sunbed situation at this hotel. I raised this with the management and the TUI rep who all replied there was nothing they could do and that the hotel was busy. The beach was nice and the water stations, (fridges of bottled water) were welcome. The noise from the Watersports was excessive and too much in my opinion and although it was fun for children it was hardly relaxing. The location was reasonable, with some markets and souvenir shops outside the hotel and a 20 minute Dolmus ride to Side. The atmosphere is lively and the hotel provides well for people who like loud music over quieter relaxation. I guess this was not particularly the hotel for us. Overall this is a good hotel, however noise of music, sunbed situation and mixed responses from staff alongside poor air-con, make this one we would not perhaps return to.

Honest review after staying here last week. Food Upon arrival (10pm) we were told there was food available for us, it was rubbish. There was bread and some kind of chicken that had Chinese vibes but was bland and plain rice and a bit of salad. At breakfast the buffet was ok, lots of waffles/pancakes, lots of bread, a decent amount of hot options and salad. It was all pretty cold. Same for dinner, a fair amount of options but quite cold. You also can not get cocktails or spirits in the buffet or any a la carte restaurants it's fizzy drinks, beer or wine, which we found very odd and disappointing, often the sodas were not cold. You can't get cocktails in the beach bar, again we found this disappointing. The Italian restaurant was our favourite, lovely food and attentive staff. The Chinese restaurant had nice food but the staff were very rushed (it was only half full) and they sat us outside stating we came too late in the evening (our reservation was at 7pm) to be sat inside, regardless of the empty tables.

Atmosphere It was hot, average temperature of about 33 degrees and humid. There was a real lack of fans in the hotel, many areas were unbearable to sit in because of the heat, there's no fans in the buffet or restaurants, we found this very difficult as we were often uncomfortable. The air-conditioning in the rooms does work but upon arrival it was not on and it was incredibly warm, the fridge also wasn't cold. We quickly figured out that if you leave one room key in the power slot at all times, including when you're out it cools down enough to sleep and the fridge stays cold. The aircon does turn off if your balcony door is open, so make sure it's shut. We were told that the Aircon fan speed worked but the temperature was centrally controlled so the dial did nothing. Our balcony was very very small, we had a two bedroom family room and the balcony was barely big enough for two plastic chairs and a tiny table, we couldn't all fit out there. We had a room facing the next hotel over, we were never bothered by the parties and shoes at the hotel, however the bedroom window in the kids room didn't close tight enough so they were disturbed by it and my parents (who had a 'seaview' room) were kept up very late by the noise, they could hear every word of the music, so that's something to bear in mind.

Beach The beach is very long, the sand gets very very hot and the sea is rocky on the shore. There is a small strip of sand on the shore which was very busy. The watersports (jet ski, paragliding, boats) are very close, often blasting out loud music but that didn't really bother us. The sun loungers stop half way to the sea so it's still quite a walk to get there (something to consider if you have small children) and you definitely need swimming shoes. The beach bar was busy and no cocktails, we never ate here. We got a cabana for 2 of our beach days and it was very nice, lovely fruit plate, waiter service, we could get used coffees and cocktails and 'champagne' and shout out to our waiter I believe his name is Ahmed, he was a star, so lovely, friendly, attentive and definitely made one of our highlights the cabana. You do get a fan and a fridge and a safe also and 4 sun loungers, but it's even further away from the sea which was a real shame. It cost us €125 per day for 4 adults and 3 kids.

Pool Trying to get a sun lounger by the pool is absolutely impossible. You have to wake before 6am to get a spot, they constantly go on about their policy of removing the towels but it never happens. There's just not enough loungers for everyone to sit by the pool. At one point we ended up sat at the pool bar for ages while the kids were in the pool. There are supposed to be waiters on roller blades to take drink orders and bring them, this only happened once, the rest of the time we got our own drinks and took our glasses back. The pool bar is great, the staff were enthusiastic and helpful and the drinks were lovely. The kids pool with slides is good, it's next to a shaded place to sit and get ice cream and iced coffees. The bigger slides were also very good, you have to be 1.2m tall for them and the queues were never that big. The slides close between 12 and 2pm every day

We had the best drinks in the upstairs inside bar, the bar tender was excellent, he had a brilliant knowledge of drinks and was happy to make us whatever we requested (within reason) he was super friendly!!

We were on a 10pm flight home so a 6pm transfer, but checkout was midday, it was €90 for one room to extend our room time.

Food As I have said the buffet had a large range of options for breakfast, lunch and dinner but very rarely were they hot. Food labelling is very good except with desserts when there's none. My mum is coeliac and went to guest services to preorder food for the a la cartes, they were pretty good in offering gluten free dishes. There was a Turkish night in the buffet then Mexican then seafood then Italian so there were opportunities to try new things every evening. Breakfast was generally the same. We ate in the a la carte snack bar once which was very nice, never got to go to the fresh flatbread woman unfortunately. I wouldn't say the food was great, the meat was often chewy and overcooked, always a nice selection of salads though, the mexican buffet night was probably the worst one, not very authentic but generally the food was good enough, no one enjoyed any of the puddings except the tiramisu, a lot of vaguely gelatinous cream filled cakes, the baklava selection was good though.

The people Staff were generally good with the exception of the staff in the Chinese restaurant, they rushed us through the entire meal and we felt like we were an inconvenience. The other guests were mostly German which I have no issue with but it does mean that a lot of the music was in German, the staff generally understood the German language better than English speakers. People were generally a little rude to be honest, I found myself constantly apologising during the buffet as I felt like I was in the way but no one ever apologised back, one morning a tall man charged straight into me and didn't even glance at me, I found that quite shocking. It was very very busy everywhere in the hotel, reception told us they were overbooked.

The room was clean and fairly modern. Nice drink selection in the mini bar, but again you really need to leave one room key in the power so it stays cold!

I wouldn't come back to this hotel, I wasnt blown away considering the price we paid, however this was our first time in Turkey so have no other to compare it to. It really would benefit from fans in the eating areas and even in the outside terraced eating areas just to make it more comfortable in the heat of the summer. There were some brilliant staff members. I think it would have been better in the buffet if you were seated by someone, as a group of 7 we had to constantly pull tables together, sometimes we had nowhere to sit in the evening and had to wait. If we were seated and then each staff member had a dedicated area to serve it would be much easier for us and them, we often asked for drinks with our meal and were forgotten about and because it was so busy it was very hard to get anyone's attention.

Of course this is all my opinion, so your experiences may differ, but I hope this is useful in some way.