Swandor Hotels & Resorts Topkapi Palace — Hotel in Aksu

Swimming pool and slides - Excellent! |There are pools and slides for all ages. My 7 and 10 years olds could go on most slides (some of the slides depended on which lifeguard was working). The swimming pool was huge, a lovely temperature, clean, and there are often activities you can join if you wish like the pool inflatable course, water polo, water aerobics, etc. There’s also a great smaller kids pool and also a quieter pool for those that want a more peaceful vibe. ||Beach - Excellent! |Beautiful warm water, sandy beach with a few stones here and there, plenty of deck chairs and even a few fridges filled with cold water.||Entertainment - Excellent! |Various activities throughout they for kids, teenager and grown ups. Lots of evening entertainment to choose from.||Kids club - Excellent! |I’ve been to 4 all inclusive holidays and the kids club here was by far the best. It’s open until midnight, no need to book, the staff are amazing, there’s plenty for the kids to do and brilliant entertainment there in the evenings. ||Food - Good enough, but not great. |A huge selection of food to choose from, catered more for Turkish and eastern cuisine, but my family found most of it bland and low quality. The puddings felt like they were just different combinations of the same ingredients/flavours. This was the first all inclusive holiday where I wasn’t excited about the meals. One good thing is that you could always get food at any time of day. ||Drinks - Very good.|There are various bars throughout the hotel. They make okay cocktails. My kids loved the mocktails and milkshakes. ||Room - Initially not good, but then (after some complaining) made better.|We booked a “Superior Deluxe room” room for 2 adults and 2 kids (aged 7 and a 10). When we arrived, the room was were decent and clean, but we discovered an issue… one of the beds was actually just a short sofa, over which had been placed a sheet, a duvet cover (but no duvet) and instead of a pillow, a pillowcase had been placed over one of the sofa cushions. We weren’t impressed. We had booked through Jet2, and their advert didn’t state that one of the beds would be a sofa bed. We only found out when entering the room. Our 7 year old slept on it the first night, slept terribly saying it was hard, and so the next day I went to reception and they offered me a bigger room (with an actual bed instead of a sofa) but for €50 extra per night. I complained that I thought it unfair as it wasn’t made clear to me that the room would have a sofa. The lady didn’t do much to help. I didn’t want to pay extra so declined to upgrade. My 10 year old slept on it that next night and slept terribly. So in the morning I went to reception again and this time they said they couldn’t do anything and to speak to one of their Guest Relations. I went there and tried to explain the situation, and the lady kept interrupting me when I was trying to talk which I found frustrating and quite rude. She didn’t let me explain before butting in. She then insisted that all rooms had sofa beds, and when I asked “so you don’t have any rooms with beds for 4 people” she said no… and I know she was wrong as reception had shown me the room upgrade options the day before. Ironic that most of the staff around the hotel were lovely and hard working, but the guest relations lady I spoke to was so unhelpful! She then said that if I needed help then I should speak to my rep. I found the Jet2 rep nearby, explained the situation to him… he was very nice, asked me to wait a few minutes while he went to investigate and he came back a few minutes later and explained that he’d managed to get me a free upgrade to a room with 4 beds. He walked with me to reception where a manager was waiting and she explained that as a special exception she would upgrade us to a better room. She did also say that there were staff who could help me write a good review for them which I found amusing. The new room had beds for the whole family and we were very comfortable there for the rest of our holiday. The room had decent air con, a mini fridge with free drinks and snacks, it was clean, a little rough around the edges in places but generally decent. One great thing was that with both rooms, we hardly heard neighbours or people outside which was nice. ||Staff - Mostly excellent, but some frustrating.|The entertainment staff, catering staff, bar staff, lifeguards and cleaners were all truly excellent. Always upbeat and happy to help. I found the reception staff a bit cold and unhelpful, and (ironically) the Guest Relations person I spoke to for help with my room was really quite unhelpful, annoying and borderline rude (see above). ||Excursion - Very good.|The hotel has various club reps through which you can book various trips. We booked a pirate ship trip, which involved a few stops including one at a waterfall, swimming off the back of the boat, a delicious free lunch (tastier than the any of the food I’d had at the hotel), and then a foam party which the kids loved. The staff were brilliant, helpful and fun. Swimming off the back of the boat was amazing. I’d highly recommend a trip like this.|||Shops and extras at the hotel - Crazily overpriced!|While almost everything in the hotel was free under the all-inclusive deal… the things that were not free were ridiculously overpriced. Examples include:|- The hotel shop wanted €50 for Nivea kids sun lotion which only costs £8 (approx €9) back home in the UK. One day my family went on the bus to the shops near the hotel and I picked up the same lotion for 900 lira (approx 18 euros) at Migros supermarket.|- Another hotel shop quoted my son €70 for a toy which costs £9 (approx €10) in the UK.|- The wine of the day at the restaurant is €60.|- I was quoted €35 for late checkout. Only after paying did I discover it was actually €35 per hour. Quite annoying that the reception staff didn’t tell me it was per hour and they had charged me for 3 hours. I immediately got a refund. Quite annoying.|- Arcade games are about 4 times the price as what we pay here in the UK. |- In the evening, small remote control boats are put out on the pool. They look lovely! We were quoted €9 for a go which seemed way too expensive.|These are just a handle of examples. I think the hotel would sell considerably more of these kinds of things if they just set normal prices.||-------||Overall - A very nice hotel and we really enjoyed our time. Most aspects were excellent. It was just a few things that stopped me giving this...

Ultra luxury it was not. Unfortunately this hotel did not look up to our expectations and actually aided in a scam. When we complained very little was done. We were simply told that they would have a staff meeting.

To start from the beginning we got no information on check in but our key card sheet which had restaurant and bar timings.

This was problematic as no one not their website mention that they majority of the facilities would be closed. To reiterate there was no mention on website prior (or when checking in) that almost everything was closed.

My friend had booked this as her birthday trip and it’s an understatement to say she was disappointed.

Most staff (not all) seem uninterested and were on their phones. Which would have been fine if it didn’t mean we were often left waiting in lines to get drinks. Getting drinks at an all inclusive was a chore, a couple of times waiters refused to help bring drinks over to the pool as it was “too far”. This was there main pool that had its own bar and another slightly closer that was open the Saturday we arrived but remained closed the rest of the week with no explanation. This was worse as some of the guests who were sat with us had mobility issues.(was in a wheelchair).

Some of the staff would also make a face/ comments whenever we ordered a few drinks at a time. We ordered two drinks each (group of 4)so we could enjoy the drinks in the sun instead of constantly walking to the bar. They refused to serve past the front of the first bar.(we also had to order at least 2 drinks per person as they were in small glasses, limited alcohol and not filled up all the way).

There were also very limited activities; darts, karaoke and pool.

In regards to the scam and complaint that we made. There were limited vegetarian options at this hotel as only one of their a la carte restaurants were open and it did not serve a vegetarian options. My friend is vegetarian. We asked for recommendations of near by restaurants. (I have never had to do this at any all inclusive let alone an ultra luxury one)

We booked and on the day went to the guest relations desks an hour before our reservation (google suggested it was a 15 minute drive) we asked them how we call a taxi to which we were told the bell boys would do it for us. This seemed nice at first however we explicitly asked for a taxi with a card machine as we had no cash ( we came to an all inclusive). As you can guess this didn’t happen and we were left trying to communicate with the taxi driver. The kicker was the guest relations and bell boy settled on it would be 600vturkish lira. Their suggestion was to let him drive us to a petrol station and pay for his petrol if we had no cash. To which I was outraged and realised they were simply incompetent. We’d even tried to use the onsite cash machine at this point which rejected our cards. (We also later found out that If that machine had eaten our cards at that point the hotel would have been able to do nothing.)

We ended up getting the cab driver to find an ATM on the way. On the way back the venue we went to had a taxi button. The driver asked us cash or card which wasn’t a problem at this point. The return that we acquired ourselves was 1/3 of the price.

When we complained we were told that the staff are not supposed to “negotiate” the price as all taxis are external. We were also then shown the sign where it says this that was in the glass under books and papers by the shift leader the next day.

There were a few staff members that bought some charm to the place. The following staff members were the only reason we didn’t leave on our second day; Ismail(restaurant staff), Mustafa( bar staff) Murat(entertainment team), ifrasil(restaurant staff) Armet (entertainment staff) and Ali (bar staff).

Update we have also now seen that this week they have resumed their entertainment service.

It’s a shame that this was our experience as the rooms were nice and clean and the cleaning staff were wonderful as well unfortunately we didn’t get...

This resort has a lot of potential with beautifully designed buildings and pools, unfortunately the rooms are older and the people running the resort are out of touch with the new trends in food. It is a massive resort overrun with too many guests for the facilities. It is all inclusive and for example the lunch meal starts at 12.30pm and finishes at 2.00pm and the food is removed immediately. Dinner in the Main Restaurant is from 7pm to 9pm. You always feel rushed without time to really relax and enjoy your meal. If you are late you will be battling to find a seat and most tables do not get cleared fast enough as people leave.

The Salads and fruits are wonderful and fresh. However the Hot food selection was always overcooked, not warm enough and has been sitting far too long to be really enjoyable. The fish is the worst we have been served anywhere in the world, mostly the same every day. Because of the amount of people and the lack of supervision by staff and parents children run around sampling things from the buffet and return them to the platters. One child took a big spoon of butter tasted it and returned it to the large bowl.

It is definitely not relaxing as large noisy trollies are pushed through the dinning areas collecting up mountains of dirty plates and left over food.

There is no time for Sanitisation between seatings of guests.

In this Era of Infectious Diseases like Covid most places (even big Cruise Ships like Virgin Cruise) have turned to individual stations where food is cooked fresh to order for guests with smaller seating areas divided into specific types of food available instead of great big free for all overrun with too many people.

The Bathrooms in the rooms need a good disinfect to get rid of mould growing down the outside join areas of shower screens near the toilets and along the back ground area grouting especially the corners. A good bleaching and scrubbing with more time for the poor overworked cleaners to do this job before rushing to put more guests in.

There is nothing to dry your hands on in the one and only disabled toilet in the Lobby area and they were always filled with people who did not have a disability, One man was in there reading the paper and smoking a cigarette.

There are no dedicated areas outside for non smokers which was disappointing down at the beach restaurant and pool areas.

Sun lounges do not have a setting to sit upright and if you want to read there is nothing to rest your back against as they are always partly in recline, most uncomfortable.

Furniture around the hotel is mostly to low for older people with knee or hip problems, you can sit down but getting out is a different story.

The Guests Services Staff in the Lobby were not of assistance in anything we needed, we went to them a few times. For example I had sent a list of things to the hotel that needed fixing in our room by message and when nothing happened we went down to make sure the message was received. it appeared no one had read the message or was even interested in finding it and just wanted us to list them again for them. The list included items like having real china cups and saucers for tea and coffee and real glasses for drinks instead of paper cups that leaked and crumpled up when filled with hot or cold water. The one English speaking lady on duty when we needed help with the nurse for an injection just wanted us to phone and the nurse ourselves which we were reluctant to do as she did not speak very much English.

I would however like to make special mention of these fabulous staff who gave excellent service to us by remembering what we liked to drink and bringing the drinks without us even having to ask. They always had a smile and a kind word. They seemed to work harder than any others. Thank you so much to these lovely people who made our meal times much pleasanter than they would have been otherwise.

This hotel is officially rated 5 Star but we would...