Delphin Be Grand Resort

I stayed at Delphin Imperial Hotel in June this year, which is considerably better than this hotel in many ways.

It is incomprehensible that the drink fridges get locked in the afternoon, and I don't understand why there is no beer in them — that was readily available at Imperial. The food is heavy on carbohydrates, while there could be significantly more meat options. Lunch is quite basic for a hotel of this class.

On the positive side, the service is good, and the staff is generally polite and attentive. However, the music in the evening can be heard until 23:30, which disturbs sleep and relaxation.

All in all, my rating is 3/5 because many things could and should be much better for this price point.

We stayed for seven nights with our 15- and 17-year-old children. Overall, we had a good holiday, but I probably wouldn’t return to Be Grand. It’s a good family resort, particularly for younger children and teenagers, but I think the “ultra all-inclusive” label sets expectations that the hotel doesn’t quite meet.

The Relax Pool is the big win for teenagers. It’s 14+, so our kids could use it, and it was easily the nicest and quietest pool in the resort. There were always sunbeds available without having to get up at stupid o’clock and put a towel down. The main family/activity pools were a completely different proposition, with loungers packed four deep, loud music and activities going on all day. I was quite happy to watch that from a distance.

The resort is huge but fairly easy to get around, although I still managed to get lost a few times. There’s loads to do: a decent water park, gym, funfair, splash park, beach and plenty of pools. Some of the water slides are showing their age and can be pretty uncomfortable, so I’d stick to the inflatable-ring ones. The lazy river is probably the slowest I’ve ever been on, and having to wear a life jacket rather undermines the whole relaxing bit.

Food is a mixed bag. The main buffet has an enormous amount of food but somehow not much genuine variety. Most of it was fairly nondescript and lacked flavour. Breakfast was better, particularly the fresh crepes and waffles.

In fact, some of the best food came from the outdoor concessions. The kebabs and burgers were really good and tasty, helped by the fact that you could fill them with fresh salad, which I really liked. The seasoned chips were also very good.

For lunch, the Snack Bar inside the Arena was our favourite. There was an excellent salad bar, plus pasta, burgers, pizza, seafood, chicken and steak. We ate there twice and thought it offered some of the freshest and best-quality food at the resort, with plenty of shaded seating.

The à la carte restaurants are, in my opinion, not worth the effort. You have to book two days ahead using the self-service kiosks, with bookings opening at 9am. In practice, that means queueing at 9am to try to get a restaurant for the evening two days later. We did it, but having experienced most of the restaurants, I wouldn’t bother again.

The teppanyaki was enjoyable but more theatre than great food. The Chinese was alright, the Italian was very average and the Turkish restaurant was also pretty disappointing despite having read that it was one of the better ones. We also had a particularly rude maître d’ there. Several of the restaurants seemed understaffed and, on more than one occasion, appeared surprised when we arrived despite having a booking.

Drinks are convenient rather than premium. There are bars everywhere, fridges full of cold drinks and staff on rollerblades who will bring drinks to your sunbed, which is a nice touch. But unless you ask, you generally get house spirits. The lobby bar seemed to be the place to go for better/branded spirits.

The cocktails were generally disappointing. They’re hand-poured and some bars seemed to have a policy of “when in doubt, add more alcohol”, so a few were more spirit than cocktail. The pier bar was better, and I had a very good White Russian there.

There are also a lot of Turkish soft drinks rather than the big international brands. That said, the little Turkish drinks in glass bottles were actually excellent.

The room was a real strength. We had a large family room on the sixth floor of D Block with a super king bed and three singles, split across two areas with a shared bathroom. It was clean, comfortable and well maintained. Housekeeping was excellent, the minibar was replenished every day, and the sheets were changed every couple of days. The shower was excellent, and there was a hairdryer and shaver socket in the bathroom.

There are, however, signs that parts of the resort are getting tired. Some public areas, floors and lifts looked worn and could have been cleaner. Some fittings and furnishings in the room also need attention, and the decorative external lighting is clearly not what it once was.

A few practical tips:

• Bring proper European plug adapters. We assumed there would be USB sockets in the room and only brought USB leads. There weren’t any USB sockets.

• We also had some difficulty getting devices to charge overnight. I can’t say what caused it, but another guest mentioned the same thing. There is a charging station near the gym, but it was extremely slow and didn’t appear to be working properly.

• The Wi-Fi was fine and we had no problems with it.

• The beach is decent but nothing special: clean, sandy but gritty and fairly tightly packed.

• There’s a free full-size coach into Antalya, around 9:30am and back at 2pm. Personally, I thought the shopping strip immediately outside the hotel was better than Antalya for the sort of shopping we were looking for.

• If you have a late transfer home, don’t assume your holiday ends at checkout. At 12pm they remove your wristbands but give you a paper ticket, which means you can continue using the resort. We discovered the indoor pool on our last day, which has changing rooms and showers. We spent the afternoon using the pools and slides, then went there to shower and change before travelling home. A very useful facility to know about.

One final observation: the “Irish Bar” is possibly the least Irish Irish bar I’ve ever seen. I’m still not entirely sure why it’s called that, but it did show Premier League football, so it served a purpose.

Would I go back? Probably not.

Be Grand is not a bad hotel. Far from it. The rooms are excellent, housekeeping is very good, there are loads of facilities, the Relax Pool is brilliant for teenagers and there is plenty of food and drink available.

But for me, “ultra all-inclusive” is overselling it. I expected a more premium experience, particularly when it came to food, drinks and service. What I found was a good all-inclusive family resort with a few premium elements.

If you go expecting that, rather than expecting luxury, I think you’ll have a perfectly good holiday. For us, though, next time I’d probably spend a bit more and go somewhere genuinely premium.