Eftalia Village

So, where do I start?

Let’s start with the hotel itself. It’s moderately clean and, at the end of the day, clean enough that you’re happy to lay your head down at night. It’s nothing spectacular and certainly not somewhere I’d rave about, but it does the job. I’ve stayed in much cleaner places, and I’ve stayed in worse.

The biggest disappointment for me was the food and drinks.

This is honestly the worst all-inclusive I’ve experienced when it comes to what is and isn’t included. Having to pay extra for cocktails at an all-inclusive resort is something I’ve never come across before. If you’re booking an all-inclusive, you naturally expect a decent selection of drinks to be included.

The food itself was okay — edible, but nothing exciting, and there wasn’t a huge amount that appealed to children. That said, if you head down to the food court on the island between 12pm and 4pm, there is much more choice for kids.

The staff were probably the biggest let-down.

I’ve been to Turkey many, many times, and one of the things I’ve always loved is the Turkish hospitality. Normally, the staff genuinely cannot do enough for you. Unfortunately, that wasn’t our experience here.

A lot of the staff came across as rude, abrupt and as though serving you was a massive inconvenience. We particularly noticed this towards women, especially women standing alone at the bar.

One example: I ordered some soft drinks and two beers. The barman served the soft drinks, then walked down to the beer pump to pour the beers. Rather than bringing them back up — which he had to walk back past anyway to continue serving people — he aggressively pointed towards the beers for me to go and get them myself.

There were several other occasions where we experienced similar behaviour from different members of staff, including around the bars on the island. It just wasn’t the Turkish hospitality we’ve experienced elsewhere.

We even spoke to a local who said he had noticed the same thing himself and felt the staff weren’t providing the standard of hospitality he would normally expect in Turkey.

Now, the positives.

The waterslides are fantastic. There are loads of slides both at the hotel and on the island, so if your children love swimming and slides, they’ll have plenty to keep them occupied.

There are also activities available for an additional cost, such as ziplining and drift cars, which we actually really enjoyed.

Unfortunately, though, the general atmosphere of the hotel really brought the experience down for us.

It was, quite frankly, rough as fu*k.

There were constant arguments, domestics, people screaming across the pool at each other and generally behaving badly. A lot of it was from British holidaymakers, which was honestly embarrassing and gave us absolutely no pride in being British.

We saw people pushing lifeguards into the pool while they had their phones and radios in their hands, people shouting across the pool, loads of swearing and arguments about everything from social services to who someone was sleeping with and when their UC was being paid.

If you’re travelling with young children, this is something I’d seriously consider. There was a LOT of foul language and behaviour that I personally wouldn’t want my children exposed to on holiday.

The rep was another disappointment.

Gemma, the hotel rep, was honestly diabolical at times. It felt like talking to a brick wall.

We wanted to visit Land of Legends and asked her for the price. We were told £250, but when we actually went to book it, the price was £290.

More importantly, we weren’t told that because we were visiting out of season, a significant amount of the park would be closed. With children aged 5 and 4, this was pretty important information because a lot of the things they would have been able to go on were unavailable.

There was also an incident involving a young lad who had travelled on our transfer. He had accidentally left a bag containing money behind, which we handed to the transfer driver and asked him to return it.

I messaged Gemma afterwards to check whether he had received it because, understandably, I was concerned about a young person being in Turkey without his money, phone etc. Her response was essentially that he wasn’t staying at her hotel, so she didn’t know.

I asked if she could simply contact the driver to check, especially because she had previously been able to message us through the same system when we were running late for our own transfer. I received no response.

I then asked her face-to-face and was simply told, “I’m sure he will have.”

That really wasn’t good enough for me.

Would I return? Absolutely not.

We’ve been to Turkey countless times and have stayed in different areas and different types of hotels, from budget to more expensive resorts, and this experience was completely different from what we’ve come to expect from Turkey.

I genuinely wouldn’t return to Alanya after this experience, and I certainly wouldn’t return to this hotel.

I understand that you get what you pay for, and this is clearly one of the cheaper options for a reason. If you’re looking for a cheap holiday, aren’t bothered about the quality of the food and drinks, and your main priority is keeping the kids entertained with waterslides and activities, then you might absolutely love it.

But if you’re travelling with young children and want a relaxed family atmosphere, decent all-inclusive food and drinks, good hospitality and somewhere that feels comfortable and respectful, I personally wouldn’t choose this hotel.

And finally — if this is your first ever experience of Turkey, please don’t judge the whole country based on this place.

Turkey has some absolutely incredible resorts, hospitality, food and people. We’ve experienced that time and time again, which is exactly why we keep coming back.

This hotel just wasn't it for us.

Food was always cold ie every morning 5 trays of fried eggs standing behind counter that had been cooked . It was clean hotel.

Been here many of times clean food good and entertainment good must recommend