Swandor Topkapi Palace Hotel

Such a wonderful experience. Amazing food, drinks, service is superb and so friendly. Great atmosphere.

I found this holiday really disappointing on a number of levels.
1). This hotel is incredibly noisy - doors slamming and general shouting until 2am and it restarts from 6am onwards. Complete lack of respect for people sleeping. Doors should be fitted with closers to ensure the slamming can’t happen.
2). The restaurant situation is just bonkers!! Dinner is only 2 hours from 7pm to 9pm in the main buffet restaurant and trying to accommodate over 2000 people in that time is just chaotic! The staff do an amazing job of cleaning tables etc but trying to get your food is just so difficult - pushing / shoving etc. why is dinner only 2 hours but breakfast is 3 hours. There is a ‘late dinner’ in a smaller space but it is very limited on what is available and not always suitable and is also incredibly busy.
3). SMOKING LITERALLY EVERYWHERE. As a non smoker - I found that literally everywhere outside was a smoking area which was overwhelming! The smell was just horrific all the time. Even in the lunch snack bar - people were smoking in the covered area. I don't want to eat with people smoking around me.
4). It took me asking 3 times for extra pillows before 1 additional pillow was recieved - I asked for 3. 5). I don’t feel that this is a 5 star hotel - having travelled a lot. The towels at the pool were, on occasion, threadbare and not of good quality. The room had slippers but no bathrobes. The safe was located on the floor - which made access quite difficult. We booked a deluxe 2 bedroom room - yet the room was really small and the bathroom even smaller. To get to the bathroom we had to squeeze past the 4th bed which disturbed the person ‘trying’ to sleep during the night.
The entertainment is very loud but of good quality. When we arrived there was a lack of information provided about the hotel, layout, booking of al a carte restaurants, restaurant opening times etc. We didn’t arrive until almost midnight but were awoken at 8am by Thomas asking us to attend a meeting to sell us excursions. The only information gathered at that was that the onsite spa is ‘very expensive’ and we should book elsewhere with him. If you are looking for a relaxing and restful holiday I’m afraid I can’t recommend this hotel.

Stayed at Swandor for a week as a family of three. We had a room in block 5 that had a great pool view.

Entertainment- We found the entertainment to be brilliant, a couple of days had a guy on a jet ski in the pool during the day and it was great to watch. The entertainment in the amphitheatre at night was good acts.

Pool - The pool is massive and the slides are great for kids.

The hotel is very clean and our room was nice. The beach area and snack bar was good.

Restaurant - the main buffet is a problem. It's madness. It's overcrowded and you have to walk about for ages trying find a table. The staff don't help at all with trying to sort tables. The ques at the food stations are massive. I've never seen anything like it in any hotel I've been to. The food and dinner and lunch is basically the exactly the same thing. The food is decent at lunch and dinner but very repetitive. Breakfast we found to be really poor. The dinner isn't open long enough at night for the amount of people in a huge hotel.

Sunbeds - not an issue getting them but they are all squashed together.

Hotel has lots of very rude guests who push in rather than wait in line. This is not the hotels issue. The rubber rings water slide certain people seem to think they can just keep the ring for themselves and keep going on it while other folk are waiting.

Weather was brilliant.

Overall this hotel is good for a family as the entertainment and facilities are good and we enjoyed it. I would recommend the hotel but would make folk aware of the buffet issues as its not enjoyable. I would return to lara beach again but probably not to this hotel just because of the repetitive food and the chaos of the restaurant.