Marmaris Palace Hotel

3 readers found this review helpful

I have just returned from this hotel which was full to the brim with russian people who are very rude and miserable. There are many russians in Turkey. Sunbeds around the complex are in shortage as you can only get one if you are up at 8am. I found the hotel very noisy at times and the air conditioning is very poor. In 100 degree heat it is just not acceptable. Certain foods are on each meal time like breads, cheeses, salads etc the main courses do differ but i feel when cooking for the masses its not always top quality. Food is available in the hotel more or less all day and night, same with the drinks. It has a few bars and a small nightclub but nobody seemed to go into the nightclub. The bar on the beach is not part of the all inclusive either. Pedalo's and canoes are part of your AI but all motorised water sports are chargeable. The complex is like a mini village really, it is quite well equipped in that sense and the setting is very nice. there seems to always be something on for the kids round the main pool and a show is normally on in the amphitheatre at night, different things like hypnotist to singing etc.....The staff all seem friendly enough. The rooms in the bungalows are bigger than in the actual hotel. We had no sighting of our thomson rep for the duration of our stay. Icmeler is quite nice and there are plenty bars and restaurants, Marmaris on the other hand is banging in the bar street area at night and is full of turkish off duty waiters and russians, we saw more brits on the beachfront bars in Marmaris. Taxis from this hotel to marmaris are about 20 lira which is about 7/8 GBP and taxis into icmeler are about 5GBP, The dolmus (bus) goes from icmeler to marmaris for 2 lira 80pence but it gets full very quickly. We managed to get a meal for 3 with starters and a bottle of wine and coffes for around 55GBP in icmeler and it was a nice restaurant so its quite cheap to eat out when you get sick of the AI. There are no bacon or sausage on the breakfast in the hotel but you can get it on the cafes off the complex. Dont bother with the night time boat trip as it is just boring for 3 hours 10pm - 1am. Its just a waste of time when you can be sat in the trendy cushioned beach bar. The water taxis are about every half hour from the hotel at around 7.50 lira 3GBP. The market in ocmeler is on a wed from 9 - 4, it is absolutely packed and they ask to shake your hands and then wont let go and start attaching jewellery to you so you cant walk off, dont shake the hands and be firm, dont buy anything at the first price they give you - always half the price straight away and they usually agree, they love to barter with you, i saved about £50.00 on 2 bags through bartering. Some of the bags are cheaper and you can get like 3 for a tenner but some are more leatherlook and better made so these are the ones you need to barter for. It has clothers, belts, shoes, food, teas, allsorts for sale. The beach is quite good and you just float in the sea you dont need to tread water, its really freaky......... Overall we had a good time, i dont think i would go back to this hotel but will probabaly try a different resort in Turkey again at some point.

27 readers found this review helpful

Review of the Marmaris Palace Hotel, Icmeler, Turkey.
Ok, where to start?
My family and I (I am 38, my partner 37 and our son is almost 7) have very recently returned from the Marmaris Palace Hotel in Icmeler, Turkey (June 2009). Initially we read ALOT of reviews about this hotel, many mixed but with the majority seemingly positive.
I will keep this review as unbiased and neutral as possible, based on our experiences and observations only.
THE HOTEL and ROOM
The Marmaris Palace is a huge complex formed of the main hotel and garden 'bungalows' for larger families; we occupied the main hotel and therefore any comments about decor are concerning this part of the hotel.
Firstly, the comments about the decor being outdated within the rooms and the hotel is in my opinion spot on. We paid a pretty bundle for this holiday (approximately £2100.00 with Thomas Cook) and can honestly say that the interior of the room was not of a high standard overall and certainly not worth what we paid for (our bath had a chunk missing from the tiled area which had been repaired in a shoddy fashion, and the blackout curtain had holes in it.) The mini fridge (you have to stock it yourself after the initial water - which was just two bottles - ran out), was not good at chilling the drinks to any degree. You will have noted that the rooms include Air Conditioning. This is correct, but again do not expect it to chill to a reasonable extent; ours did not at any rate and we were left feeling too warm most of the time. The rooms however are kept immaculately clean with fresh towels every day.
THE 'CLEANING WATER' INCIDENT
We had one rather worrying incident during our stay. My partner was hanging out some now clean washing on the balcony, when there was a sudden downpour of water from the balcony above us. This not only drenched the clean washing, but also spattered my partner. Enraged, she ran upstairs to the room in question to find that it was a cleaning woman sweeping off the dirty water from cleaning the balcony etc...Nice. Not!
We told one of the hotel supervisors who came to see what the fuss was about. She just merely said 'Ok, Ok, OK...' several times and made a quick exit. We DID NOT get an apology, had to wash the clothes once again and my partner had to take a shower.
ROOM SAFE
This is a payable service and costs about £36.00 for two weeks. It is not very big though.
THE 'DIESEL' SMELL
Some have commented on the smell of diesel lingering in the air. This in our instance was noticeable quite a lot. Not sure where it comes from, but you can smell it - certainly on the main stairwell and sometimes it permeated our room.
THE FOOD AND BUFFET AREA
This in our opinion was the most frustrating part of our stay at the Marmaris Palace. There are numerous set times during the day at which you can get food from various parts of the hotel however, it is strongly advised to miss the start times of any of these as it turns into a mini-stampede. The main dinner time (from about 7pm to 9.30pm I believe) is possibly the worst; we usually ended up attending at about 8.30pm when things were calmer.
The food in general is not geared too much towards the British, and there was not an awful lot of choice for children. There were always potato wedges or fries on offer, but not too much to compliment them for the children. The majority of the food is geared up for Eastern Europeans, which brings me onto the next point. If it is one thing that the British are good at it is queuing; not so for the rest of Europe it would seem. A large section - but not all - of our fellow European guests are very ignorant (something that has been touched upon previously, and by other guests who were there at the same time as us), to the point of actually pushing past you in the queue, assuming they acknowledge the queue being there in the first instance. This, after two weeks, was very frustrating, and I am generally quite patient with this kind of thing.
Incidentally, there are A LOT of Eastern European guests (Russian and Polish), and quite a large crowd of German and French.
If you do not like smoking around you when you eat, then you are going to be disappointed, especially if you wanted to eat outdoors on the pretty restaurant terrace; for the first week we sat outside and were amazed at just how many people would spark up around us and smoke between mouthfuls of food, with the majority of the actual smoke hitting nearly every table in a radius of about ten metres. Again the majority of people doing this were fellow guests from Europe.
We did eventually find the no-smoking section (although were never told it existed), which was...indoors! Even so, with the windows open the smell of smoke was evident.
On a positive note, tables were cleared very quickly and the staff are very friendly.
In the mornings and throughout the day there are some issues with the friendly sparrows which frequent the area, to the point that they land on the tables and even peck at the bread put out in the mornings for toasting etc.
A-LA CARTE RESTAURANT
Some brochures are claiming that All Inclusive guests get to eat at the A la Carte restaurant for free, once a week (this is normally a payable extra). However, we were told that this is not the case by Thomas Cook and we DID NOT get our free meal there. It says on Thomas Cook website: 'A la Carte restaurant (once per stay), with reservation fee payable locally'.
THE POOLS
The pools are very good at the Marmaris Palace, although some comments about being able to get sun-beds at 10am is a little confusing. We were there in June 2009 and can honestly report that if we did not put a towel on the beds at about 8.00am, we would not have had one; by 10am during our stay ALL beds were taken around the pools. There was usually room on the grassed sun terrace just up by the relax pool (as it is called), but this afforded no shade worth mentioning and with temperatures hitting the high 30's this is not a good idea, especially for little ones, and there are only scatter cushions on there, no sun-beds.
Incidentally there has been mention of the Relax Pool being for adults only, which theoretically it is, but the fact that families with children were using it is testament to how quickly the beds were taken around the general pool; there were none free usually from 8am onwards!
This is what happened to us with our little one, and we were relieved that children were permitted to use it as otherwise he would not have been able to use a pool which afforded us to sunbathe and keep an eye on him.
There are plenty of signs telling people that towels which were placed before 8am on sun-beds to reserve them will be removed, but this in our experience did not happen; in fact we were told that several people were putting their towels on beds from late the previous night (about 1am), and they were never removed.
THE OUTDOOR BAR AREA
Below the main buffet restaurant is the main bar and terrace area, which has tables to enjoy your drinks upon. If you were not lightning-quick you are very pressed to acquire one; they are all taken very, very quickly. Again, in this area smoking is permitted everywhere.
The bar staff however, are very efficient and friendly; special mention here to Mehmet who works like a trooper, is always smiling and having a laugh with you!
THE BEACH FRONT
This is a little disappointing, although we knew it was man-made. What you are not really made aware of is that it is made of concrete with hardly any covering (sand or otherwise) worth mentioning. We never used this area, as on our first investigation of it we were put off by cigarette butts floating on the surface...Nice!
THE 'LIT-UP' JETTY
Some of you - if you have been looking through brochures - might have seen the relaxing shot at night of a wooden jetty with scatter-cushions upon it, which has lights penetrating the sea and lighting it up; we did, and thought how nice it would be to sit out on a night, with drink in hand and perhaps look at some sea life lit by the lights. Well, forget it. When we mentioned this to our rep from Thomas Cook, we were informed that the jetty in question had been sold off (apparently bought by a bar) and was no longer free to use for Marmaris Palace guests. This in my opinion comes very close to mis-selling (if not certainly misleading), as Thomas Cook (and I guess other companies) are still using this image. We were told it was sold last season!
THE 'JOLLY ROGER' EXCURSION (with Thomas Cook)
Having a lad of almost 7 (and a big 'Pirates of the Caribbean' fan), we decided to treat him to the Jolly Roger Pirate excursion, run by Thomas Cook and their KIDSWorld outfit. This was a waste of time and there was not much for the children to do; colouring in, singing one song and 'searching' for the treasure map were all part of the on-ship 'fun'. Oh Joy...
The treasure was actually wrapped in a plastic supermarket bag (no fancy chest here me-hearties!), and was not actually shown to the children at all. The KIDSWorld reps held a LUCKY DIP (which cost 2 lira, about a quid). This turned out to be more of an UNLUCKY DIP as everyone got the same gift; a small Airtours writing pad and - I think - a set of crayons. However, it was LUCKY for us...we did not have a go! I cannot help but think that the proceeds from this went to some other 'pirates'. Incidentally, our son was given a pirate nickname by one KIDSWorld rep; Captain Bored. Just goes to show how much fun on the high seas he had, doesn't it? It was that exciting that he spent the entire return journey playing one of my mobile phone's built in games, and we all know how rubbish they are.
THE WALK TO ICMELER (along the front of the hotel)
This is a pleasant enough walk...until you get to the Nirvana Beach cafe/restaurant area.
We were constantly barracked by the owner asking why we had not used his cafe/restaurant for a meal, to have a drink in, or why we had not yet used his free sun-beds. This happened on virtually every passing of the Nirvana Beach. The worrying thing - apart from being annoying - is that the chap actually starts to get aggrieved with you, which makes you feel very uncomfortable. This got to us so much that we started getting the Dolmus into Icmeler and back again.
THE CAVALIERE RESTAURANT
We dined at the Cavaliere Restaurant three times during our stay...it is the first major restaurant you come to when walking to Icmeler along the front. It was very nice, and unlike most of the restaurants there was no hard sell to come in.
DALAMAN AIRPORT - Very expensive!
We were told about the airport being expensive, but not how expensive.
As a guide, I ordered:
2 x Double Gordon's Gin and one bottle of tonic
Tall glass of fresh orange juice
A very small white wine
This came to 96TYL (Lira), which equates to about £43.00!!!
OVERALL GOOD POINTS
Staff are friendly and work tirelessly.
Hotel very clean and rooms too.
Plenty for kids to do at the hotel.
Nice setting.
Good weather, can be VERY hot...be warned (up in the 40's on occasion)!
FINAL THOUGHTS
Whilst this does all sound like doom and gloom, this is merely based on our experiences and observations and we did have some good times there; I have every confidence that some will disagree vehemently.
I would recommended for families, but in my opinion I would not recommend it for younger couples.

12 readers found this review helpful

Myself, my partner and my 6yr old daughter have just returned from a weeks stay at the Marmaris Palace. We finally arrived after a 5hr delay (Thomas Cook)and a 2.5hr transfer in to be greeted with friendly, very helpful staff. Our room was lovely (bungalow on top floor) with excellent views and was very clean. The beds were made every day and clean towels were left each day too (lots provided). The only problem we had with the room was that the air conditioning wasn't very good so it was very hot most of the time. The air con is controlled by reception so maybe this is why.
The pool areas, jetty, and hotel grounds were immaculate and the staff were very friendly and the entertainment staff went out of their way to help you enjoy your stay althouh I have to say that if you didn't want to join in a simple no was suffice and you were left alone and not mithered to death!
The buffett restaurant was okay and there was always something to eat - especially eggs! You onlu queue for food if you are there the minute they open but as we didn't go for our evening meal until 8pm this wasn't a problem. Again the staff were excellent and the area was very clean.
Although I wouldn't say it was 5* the hotel, grounds, staff and entertainment staff were excellent. There area is quite hilly and there are lots of steps which can be quite demanding in the 40+ degree heat and definately not suitable for people with walking difficulties. The only down side to the place is the lack of air conditioning. There is none in reception or the indoor eating areas so these get really hot. The only relief from the heat is the pool.
My daughter had a wonderful time here and I can't fault it. I would go back to the Marmaris Palace and recommend it to people. Dont be put off by the negative comments on here and remember - you can't please all of the people all of the time!.

1 reader found this review helpful

first time at this part of turkey beautiful hotel but badly let down by food it was like a free for all at mealtimes, Choice was not good ,did not cater for everyones taste it was turkish or nothing. my husband survived on eggs and evening it was chips .we had a problem with our bed it was like a slab of concrete but after we spoke to our rep she very quickly managed to get our room changed and the staff were very helpful.Weather was not to bad rain 2 days but that is nobodys fault.prefer the other coast of turkey .would recommend this hotel for families with youngsters.not much to do at night.

2 readers found this review helpful

we are the honnoraty family we stayed at marmaris palace in icmeler at easter we had a fab time so much so we r going back next year for my wifes 40th birthday in august the hotel is spotless and the staff couldnt do enough for us fab

2 readers found this review helpful

Excellent holiday all round, hotel was very well maintained with staff permantely cleaning. Maids come round every day providing fresh towels and keeping the rooms clean. The rooms are basic but well kept; the food is plentiful with a variety of styles to suit all tastes. The a la carte restaurants in the hotel are also excellent for a change; however the bottled wine is very expensive. But above an excellent value for money hotel with plenty of activities on offer to keep all ages entertained.

2 readers found this review helpful

a lovey hotel not suitable for people with walking difficultis food plentyfull u can eat allday if u want rooms very clean maid every day clean towels every day pools very nice

7 readers found this review helpful

My friend and I just returned from one week all inclusive in this hotel, and I have to say, we will never do just one week ever again! Next year we will be doing 2 WEEKS MIN!
Hotel was absolutely first class in every aspect, from our arrival being fussed over by the bell boys to take our luggage at check in, right through to a whole week of sheer bliss and pampering from all the staff!
Cannot fault this hotel or staff whatsoever! I will never go anywhere else!
Food excellent and plenty choice on offer almost 24hrs per day! An absolute dream of a place to be!
Can't wait to get back!

3 readers found this review helpful

I am a young senior citizen arived back on the 27/04/09 with my wife.We have traveled a/i many times,and i can honestly say this hotel and Thomas Cook reps are on par with any we have had.I would like to say thank you to all the staff and everyone who made this hoiday so enjoyable.

4 readers found this review helpful

hey me and my boyfriend went to this hotel for a week in april and thought it was the best holiday we been on the staff were so helpful and pleasent you can have such a laugh with some of them. although it was out of season in turkey you didnt have to leave the hotel as there was so much to do. we went on 5 trips within the week and the trips were amazing, the jeep safari is a must go!! we had a turkish bath after the jeep safari which was gorgeous, however we thought it was a little rush but it was worth the extra 2 quid so cant complain. the boat trips were ok we travelled with jimmy 1st time but the second one was sunseekers cruise, same area but lovely boat and so many nice people. we went on a shoppers trip which only cost £5 each and went to turkish delight factory, leather market, jewelery store which was ok. the entertainment lasted all day and at nite was fantastic especially the mini disco for adults between 11 and 2 and free drinks!!!. rooms were big and clean. we also went scuba diving but be careful if you purchase any pics because they come on disk and our disk doesnt work :( overall fantastic holiday and would definatly go again