Hotel Ephesia

I have just returned from a fab week staying at the Ephehsia hotel.
Anyone who says this hotel is bad must be nuts! It is excellent value for money, ok its not a 5 star hotel, would give it a 3+ rating, but its comfortable, clean and the staff are very friendly and welcoming, also I have never seen staff work so hard, they all appear to work a 12 hr+ shifts and manage to be happy and courteous all the time.
The rooms are plenty big enough, sheets and towels changed every day (beware there is a mini bar in the room, this is not included in the all inclusive package).
There is no need to take beach towels either, as on check in you are issued with a card to enable you to obtain a fresh clean towel every day, its a great service.
Food is good, plenty of choice. At breakfast, there is also a chef cooking omlettes (which are fab), or pancakes, or fried eggs (these dishes vary daily), and again you can keep going back for more.
Maybe the only down side for this hotel is that there is limited seating inside in the evenings, this is probably not a problem in the summer as its warm enough to sit outside, but whilst we were there it got chilly around 10 ish, and we then struggled to get seating in the lobby bar. We went as a party of 4 adults, but this hotel is excellent for families, the beach is on the doorstep, beautiful soft sand, free sun beds and cushions, and the sea is lovely, and is shallow for a long way so very safe for young children.
I would definitely recommend this hotel, its far enough outside of Kusadasi so its peaceful, but close enough to pop into town on the bus, which you can pick up within a 2 min walk for the hotel.

The best thing about this hotel is the friendly and helpful serving staff. Nothing seemed to be too much trouble for them.
Our room was clean, well decorated and apart from the lack of a set of drawers to store clothing, was furnished to an acceptable standard. Sharing 2 single sheets on a double bed did take my wife and I some time to come to grips with. The air conditioner, like most, was erratic in operation and unless the balcony door was firmly shut would not work at all.
The buffet was limited at breakfast whilst lunch and diner was limited in a choice of cooked meats either chicken or turkey with the occasional meatball or fish dish. Cold meats at the salad bar disappeared quickly.
If you are looking for a quiet holiday do not go to this hotel, however, if you want 18 hours of over loud music and over zealous animation team then look no further. I know where I'd love to stuff their whistles. We escaped to the beach as we couldn't bear the poolside music at max volume. Be warned however that as we left new speakers were being wired in alongside the beach bar.
The main cause of night music disturbance was a neighbouring hotel whose disco relishing in noise akin to a water pump with rusting bearings went on till 04:00 hrs and sometimes even later at the weekend.

1 reader found this review helpful

This was our first time in Turkey and we were not disappointed at all. The hotel is very clean and adequate for what you need for your stay. The rooms are simple but lacking in nothing.
The food was excellent and the staff are very helpful. I would highly recommend having a Turkish bath and massage whilst staying here as it is very relaxing and enjoyable for singles and couples alike.
The entertainment was energetic and was different every night. The entertainment staff were good at getting people involved in the daily/evening activities but were not pushy if you did not feel up to it. They were constantly happy and friendly at all times, no matter what time day or night.
If I had to mark down on anything I would only say that the pool area could be bigger, with more sun beds and larger pool. Word of warning do not buy from the hotel tobacco shop as very over priced, there is a shop a minutes walk from the hotel that is perfect.
However for the money this holiday costs it is well worth every penny and i would definitely go back again.
Jamie Shelton and Lisa Harvey
Hampshire

1 reader found this review helpful

The Ephesia Hotel is a great hotel right on the beach with a clear and clean blue sea. The accommodation was good, very clean and fabulous views from the balcony.
The food is excellent and offers a wide choice of meals to suit all tastes.
The swimming pool could have been a little warmer and more seating would have been good in the bar area.
Overall for the price we paid and remember it was all inclusive, the quality of service we received it was one of the best value holidays we have ever had.

STAFF:
The staff were friendly and helpful.
The entertainment /animation was very good, funny and not at all patronising. Every night at 10 pm was a show organised by the animation staff, which kept us entertained.
HOTEL/FACILITIES:
Rooms are very simple !!!
But all the balconies have sea view and all rooms have aircon.
The pool : GREAT - fresh water.
Beach : Great, long clean beach, shallow water.
Sunbathing: there are sunloungers on the beach, a grass area and next to the pool
The Gym: non existent - well there is 1 treadmill, 1 bike and 1 weigh machine on the roof, no aircon !
FOOD:
Breakfast - lots to choose from.
Lunch + Snacks: You could either eat at the lunch buffet in the main restaurant or get snack (pizza, pasta, burgers) from the breach bar or get freshly baked pita bread with different toppings.
Ice cream and watermelons were served in the afternoon.
Dinner: Lots of different salads and desserts to choose from ! The warm dinner (as well as lunch) did not have a lot of choices (rice, pasta dish, 1 or 2 meat dishes and one vegetable dish or fries).
PEOPLE: very friendly
LOCATION:
directly on the breach, near small shops and a beach disco but about a 10 min drive from the town centre. There is a bus service very frequently as well as enough taxis.
TIME:
September was just perfect, not too busy but busy enough, end of season, the staff is relaxed and the weather just perfect.
OVERALL GREAT, just a bit disappointed about the simplicity of the rooms.

Hotel Ephesia was classed as a 4 star hotel, which may have been slightly generous. No complaints about the accommodation, however the food could have been improved slightly. OK if you like salad as there was a huge choice of various salads, not a great deal on the hot food bar apart from chicken every day and cold chips. The staff were excellent. The entertainment team worked extremely hard and were a lot of fun. No problems getting your all-inclusive drinks although they may have been watered down slightly, no problem just get two!!!! All in all I would have no reservations in recommending this hotel to anyone.

The hotel was beautiful. As soon as we got of the coach after a long and tiring journey we were amassed. It was lovely and clean. We awoke next day excited about exploring. We found that the entertainers worked very hard to make sure that there was a show every night to suit everybody in the audience.
One of the things that let us down was the fact that there was people from all different countries there so the shows were done in all sorts of different languages. The other thing that let us down was the food. It was a bit too simple that we had been expecting. But overall I’d say it was an enjoyable holiday.

On arriving at the hotel very early in the morning we found the reception area and staff to be very nice, however there were no bell boys to take our luggage and ourselves to our room and as this was classed as a 4* we did expect better service.
Some of the staff were quite rude when they found out we were English! Our children enjoyed the animation side of the holiday, the animation crew were brilliant and very friendly, and the Hotel staff should take note of this and learn from it!
The hotel position was great, the beach and water sports added a bit extra to the holiday. We found the rooms a bit tired and dated and the cleaning staff should be trained to at least some sort of standard that could actually be called CLEAN!!
Food was nice, however did tend to be a bit repetitive and a few more choices wouldn’t go amiss. On health and safety point there were no Fire Escapes at the end of the corridors and we found this to be quite worrying going by the size of the hotel.

Not knowing what to expect of our first holiday in Turkey my wife and I took tentative first steps to Kusadasi. On first impressions hotel Ephesia was clean, spacious and inviting and this was at 4 in the morning... during our 2 week stay we found, on the whole, things didn’t change. Staff seemed to be very friendly towards their German customers and ‘ok’ to us Brits who seemed to have mastered courtesy towards the staff a lot quicker.
Breakfast-Bland, no imagination.
Lunch- not too bad, got to be quick though or else you cold end up with meat juice and chips.
Dinner- No complaints about quality or imagination on this front although there seemed to be a fair amount of French Fries on the menu to replace potato wedges etc after the first dish full.
Snacks were tasty, plentiful and there when we needed them.
Entertainment was fair considering they had little in the way of crowd participation in this German oriented hotel..
Overall the staff were not too bad, a little inattentive at times and some rather rude too. Upper management seemed rather blasé towards problems of the Brits and showed no interest when problems with their staff occurred.... Please never try to order Champagne and expect to drink it YOURSELF....
As far as an All Inclusive Concept this Hotel is still only playing at it. PLEEEESE paying £30 for the contents of your mini bar would be fine if it had more than soft drinks and water!
We enjoyed our holiday, we had a few problems, we also met some very nice, genuine Turkish people we would like to call friends as well as several from England we hope to meet up with again. Unfortunately NOT in this Hotel, unless there is a serious change of attitude of middle/upper management towards other continental customers not originating in Germany and staff who do not develop a taste for other people’s Champagne.
Overall this hotel is a child in the grown up world of All Inclusive Hotels

well hotel Ephesia, I am going to put it in2 two groups the good points an the bad points:
GOOD POINT:
-lovely pizza from 12-5pm
BAD POINT: :
-it is only from 12-5pm whereas it should be all day since we went all inclusive
GOOD POINT:
-lovely staff(well most).
BAD POINT
-receptionist rather rude and has an attitude
GOOD POINT:
-they are very friendly with children
BAD POINT
-sometimes it could get annoying for the children especially always being hassled
GOOD POINT:
-very friendly to us and they seem to like black people
BAD POINT:
-always staring and talking in their language when they saw us.
Shopping is ok, they’re a lot of shops for normal stuff like crisps around, drinks, newspapers etc. to get to good shopping you should go to Centrum, Kusadasi’s not the liveliest place to stay in Turkey.
Also as soon as you, check out you are not allowed any drinks or anything, you have to make a fuss to get something. Even if you’re not being collected till 5 u have to checkout at 12 an when you do they expect you to just sit in the lobby.
the dinner has its good and bad day chips everyday(mostly cold, unless its just been done)
salads fine, meat often turkey, sometimes fish or even shish kebabs. the drinks you can receive up until 12 as soon as the clock strikes 12, there are no more drinks, even if you were queuing up, same with the pizza and the ice-cream served for 1 hour a day.
It only became an all inclusive a year ago it used to be half board, so they haven’t quite mastered it yet, there’s no need to go all inclusive the food in restaurants etc. is of reasonable price.
also the so called 'satellite consists of 2 fuzzy English channels'
its not the best hotel but do enjoy if you go, you can make the best of it, if you want to, try to get out a lot like me and my family did, threes a lot to do, there is aqualand, aquafantasy, horse-riding, boat trips, pammakule, there is also trips over to Greece. so do enjoy
bye