Tusan Beach Resort

We stayed at this hotel for 1 week.The negatives: The 5-star rating did not reflect reality; I would rather call it a strong 3-star or a weak 4-star hotel. The rooms are dated, and the mattress was extremely hard and uncomfortable. Even though I sleep on a firmer mattress at home, this felt like sleeping on concrete. You couldn't sleep on your side for long because you would wake up from the pain of the bed pressing against you. The air conditioning had a mind of its own—one minute there was a windstorm in the room, the next it was barely cooling. No matter how many times we readjusted it, it lost the settings after a while.We asked for a sea-view room, for which we paid a surcharge. We shouldn't have... We were given a room on the second floor, directly above the kitchen and the covered outdoor restaurant. As a result, the restaurant's sunshades half-blocked the view of the sea, and we had to smell the food being prepared practically all day long. To make matters worse, there was outdoor grilling during dinner time; the smoke engulfed the entire room, and we were almost afraid the smoke detector would go off. Unfortunately, it was impossible to sit out on the balcony because the constant food smell, the smoke, the clattering of cutlery, and the noise of the guests became annoying after a few days. It was impossible to properly relax because the continuous noise was present from the morning hours until 9 PM throughout our 1-week vacation. I wanted to wake up in the morning, sit outside, and just stare at the sea—which is exactly why I requested a sea-view room—but I missed out on that. No one should accept rooms 2251 to 2255 if they happen to pay extra for a sea-view room.The positives: The staff are very kind and smiling, and they don't hold out their hands for tips. The cleaning was fine; we got fresh towels every day, and in exchange for a little change, they folded wonderful things out of the blankets :). The beach directly by the hotel is a bit narrow—with only 2 rows of sunbeds—but I liked it, though it was crowded. However, those who couldn't stand the crowd could find plenty of sunbeds in the shadier areas of the garden. The water is very clean with hardly any waves; it truly has a child-friendly shoreline. The sand is a bit dirty because many people don't put their cigarettes in the provided ashtrays but simply bury them in the sand. The trash cans are continuously emptied on the beach, but the sand is not raked through—mind you, there wouldn't really be a chance to do so due to the narrowness of the beach. The food is varied, delicious, and diverse—if anyone says they stayed hungry, they are lying :)Other details: What was strange and something I have never experienced—even though we have been vacationing in Turkey for more than 10 years, granted in the Alanya region—is that they put incense burners inside the indoor restaurant, and they smell terrible. It smelled as if someone was smoking right under my nose; it was suffocating, and this smelly smoke was drifting around among the food because they were placed in several spots. The Wi-Fi is awful, almost unusable. It is only good for sending messages at most.All in all, I recommend the hotel, but as I wrote above, one should not expect a luxurious hotel for their money.

Where do I even begin? We booked a 5-star all-inclusive hotel and somehow ended up feeling like we’d accidentally checked into the filming of a Tenko episode.

Let’s start with the beds. Calling them beds is generous. These things wouldn’t look out of place in a medieval torture chamber. After a night on one, you don’t wake up feeling refreshed — you wake up wondering whether you’ve been interrogated in your sleep.

And the sheets… I have genuinely seen doilies with more coverage. They were so thin you could practically read a newspaper through them, and they didn’t even properly cover the mattress. Apparently the hotel’s definition of “all-inclusive” includes an exciting game of Which Bit Of The Bed Will The Sheet Cover Tonight?

Then there’s the food.

If you enjoy salad, cold meats and coldscrambled eggs with the consistency of something that has been waiting patiently for retirement, you’re in luck. If you don’t, I’d recommend bringing snacks. Lots of snacks. Very lots of snacks.

We’ve stayed all-inclusive before, but this was the first time we’ve experienced an all-inclusive resort where ICE CREAM FOR DESSERT WASN’T EVEN A THING. Not hidden. Not occasionally unavailable. Just apparently not part of the grand five-star experience.

The evening restaurant experience deserves its own award. The smoke coming from the restaurant is so intense that London’s Burning would probably have been concerned about the competition. Sit outside in the evening and you’ll have two choices: eat your dinner or attempt to breathe. Why choose when you can do neither comfortably?

The bellboy also deserves a mention. Miserable doesn’t quite cover it. He looked like we’d personally offended him by asking him a question at the hotel. There is apparently a luggage room, which sounds useful — except guests aren’t allowed to put their luggage in it. So presumably it’s there for decorative purposes. Perhaps it’s the hotel’s way of adding another layer of mystery to the holiday.

To be fair, the reception staff were genuinely lovely, friendly and helpful, so full credit where it’s due. They were probably the only people who looked pleased to see us.

The location is nice, but unfortunately a nice location doesn’t magically turn a 3-star experience into a 5-star one.

Overall: If this is 5-star, I’d hate to see 3-star. The beds belong in a torture museum, the sheets belong on a doll’s house, the food selection appears to have been designed by someone who has a personal vendetta against anything resembling food and the evening smoke could probably be seen from the Acropolis

Tusan Beach: come for the views, stay because you’re too exhausted from the mattress to leave.

Would we return?

Only if we were being held hostage.

Our stay was amazing. Food was good, quite a lot of options. The whole staff is very nice, always happy to help. The animation team is great, they all make your stay more joyful. Overall very good experience.