Aquaworld Belek

Good family resort, but room for improvement

Overall, we had a good stay at Asteria Family Resort. The resort has lots of great facilities, and there’s plenty to keep families occupied. The staff were generally friendly and welcoming, which was a definite positive.

The beach was another highlight. It was a good size with plenty of space, although the various water activities were quite expensive, which made them less appealing if you’re travelling as a family.

Food was probably the biggest disappointment. There was plenty of choice, but breakfast, lunch and dinner felt very repetitive, with only one or two different dishes appearing each evening. After a few days, it became quite predictable. More variety would really improve the experience.

We stayed in a standard double room, which was fairly basic but had everything you would expect. Unfortunately, the air conditioning wasn’t working properly on the first day, which was frustrating, although this was eventually resolved.

For families, there were regular kids’ activities and evening entertainment. However, I felt the kids’ evening events started too late, especially considering the resort is aimed heavily at families with young children. The children’s entertainment itself could also have been more varied and engaging.

Overall, a solid family resort with plenty of potential. The facilities, beach and friendly staff are definite positives, but better food variety, more engaging kids’ entertainment and more reasonably priced water activities would make a noticeable difference. We enjoyed our stay, but there are certainly areas where the resort could improve.

I am very disappointed with our stay at this hotel.

From the very beginning, the attitude at the reception was disappointing. Whenever they do not want to deal with an issue or take action, it seems as if they suddenly stop understanding English.

The most disappointing part of our stay was the food. We came with our 1-year-and-8-month-old child, who developed food poisoning during the first few days of our stay, with vomiting, diarrhea and fever. The kitchen staff were kind and did prepare the food we specifically asked for our child, which I appreciate. However, the food options were not very diverse, as advertised, and some of the dishes were simply not acceptable.

We stayed for 8 days, and towards the end of our stay, I also developed food poisoning. At that point, I could only eat pretzels that we bought outside the resort. What is the point of an ultra all-inclusive concept if the drinks and food are of such poor quality? The soft drinks tasted like nothing, the beer was nothing special, and the cocktails were extremely weak and poorly prepared.

The children’s pool was another disappointment. The water was extremely cold and, because the pool is also located among the trees, it was impossible to keep our child in the water for more than half an hour.

Another major issue was the number of insects. There were mosquitoes, ants and other insects everywhere. Both my child and I left the hotel covered in insect bites. We asked the hotel for something to deal with the mosquitoes, and they were helpful with that, but I strongly suspect that there were also some insects in the bedding, because every day we woke up with new bites. It was horrible.

The towels also smelled extremely bad. I honestly do not know what they wash them with, but they did not feel clean and smelled unpleasant.

It was also almost impossible to find a sunbed on the beach or around the adult pool. People would come very early in the morning, leave their towels on the sunbeds and then leave, even though the hotel specifically states that reserving sunbeds this way is not allowed. With a small child, I could not wake him up early just to run to the beach and put towels on sunbeds. The hotel felt overcrowded for what it actually offers.

The only things I genuinely enjoyed were the beautiful views, the nicely landscaped outdoor areas, the children’s playground and the activities organized for children.

This was the first holiday where I actually found myself looking forward to going home.

Unfortunately, based on our experience, I would not choose this hotel again. One more thing that really disappointed me was the beach. We specifically chose this hotel over other similar hotels, with comparable facilities and the same number of stars, because the beach was advertised as having no stones. We actually paid extra for this specific reason, as having a more child-friendly, sandy beach was very important to us because we were travelling with a small child. Unfortunately, the beach does have stones, which was extremely disappointing considering that this was one of the main reasons we chose and paid more for this hotel.