Kirman Arycanda De Luxe

This hotel makes a great first impression. As soon as you walk through the automatic doors into reception, you're greeted by a beautiful, modern lobby that makes you feel like you've arrived somewhere special. Even though we got there around 2:30am, check-in was quick, easy and friendly.

We had a room on the first floor overlooking the car park. It was spacious and well equipped, with plenty of storage, a minibar stocked with soft drinks, water and beer, a complimentary bottle of wine, and tea and coffee making facilities. The bathroom wad also a good size, with a large shower and a good selection of toiletries. Beds are comfy enough and bedding and towels are regularly changed though you do find you wake up with fresh bites on your legs every morning so make of that what you will.

The hotel itself looks nice overall, but after a few days we did start noticing areas that weren’t quite as clean as they should be. The impressive appearance doesn’t always match the attention to detail.

We found breakfast and lunch to be quiet, so there were no long queues. Dinner on the other hand was often chaotic.

Unfortunately, once the initial “wow” factor wore off, we found the overall experience to be fairly average.

Food & dining

To be fair, the food itself was generally good and there was loads of choice. We weren’t expecting à la carte food every night, and there was always something we could find to eat.

We did try the Turkish à la carte restaurant, which we really enjoyed in terms of food. That said, the experience did feel quite rushed. As soon as we sat down, dips and starters were already on the table and we were quickly asked for our main course. The mains then came out not long after we’d started eating, so the whole meal felt a bit rushed.

Our bigger concern was the dining environment and hygiene in the main restaurant. We found ourselves checking plates, bowls, glasses and cutlery before every meal, and on several occasions had to swap items because they weren’t properly clean, with food residue or water marks still visible.

We also saw children using their hands to take food from the serving areas and even touching serving spoons. On a few occasions, we noticed fresh food being placed on top of older food instead of the tray being cleared and replaced. These might not bother everyone, but it definitely affected our confidence in the dining experience especially as our biggest disappointment was that illness affected much of our family during the stay. My wife had diarrhoea and vomiting, my son also developed diarrhoea, and I had stomach pains and sickness.

Three people in the same family being unwell on the same holiday is hard to ignore and it had a big impact on our holiday.

After that, we became much more cautious with food. We started avoiding things we would normally have enjoyed and stuck to simpler options because we didn’t want to risk getting ill again. We were constantly thinking about what felt “safe” to eat. That really took away from the relaxed holiday feeling.

Beach

The beach was one of the biggest letdowns. It’s made up of pebbles and shingle, so beach shoes are pretty much essential if you want to walk into the sea comfortably.

There is a nice 10-minute walk around the headland where you can climb up and get some great views back across the bay, which is definitely worth doing, but the beach itself wasn’t somewhere we wanted to spend much time.

Entertainment

The entertainment was a bit hit and miss. Some shows were actually really good, especially the circus, magic show and Michael Jackson show, while others were quite disappointing.

Another issue is that the neighbouring Leodikya Hotel and this hotel share a lot of the same shows. So once you’ve seen a performance at one hotel, you can end up with evenings where there’s nothing new to watch.

The nights alternated with live music or the DJ and felt quite basic and ran until 23:30.

If you’re staying more than a few days, I’d recommend bringing a pack of cards or some travel games, as we ended up using them on evenings when there wasn’t anything new to watch.

Smoking

Another downside for us was the amount of smoking in outdoor areas. Smoking is allowed around the pools, including the children’s pool, so it wasn’t unusual to have people smoking on nearby sunbeds.

The same goes for the restaurant terraces. There are only small non-smoking areas, so if you want to eat outside without smoke around you, you really need to arrive early to have a chance of getting a non-smoking table. As a family, we found this quite disappointing.

We felt the neighbouring Leodikya Hotel was better and spent more time in their beach bar. The bar service there felt more attentive and, in our experience, the drinks seemed better quality. The staff also seemed to enjoy their jobs more and created a noticeably better atmosphere.

Overall

There are definitely positives. The hotel looks fantastic, the rooms are spacious, the reception area is impressive, the staff were generally friendly, there’s a huge amount of food choice and we never had an issue finding sunbeds.

But once the initial “wow” factor wore off, we felt the hotel was fairly average in a number of areas.

The combination of illness affecting three members of our family, having to check plates and cutlery, things we saw around the buffet, smoking around the pools, limited non-smoking areas, the inconsistent entertainment all added up to a much less enjoyable holiday than we expected.

We left feeling that this is a hotel that puts a lot of effort into first impressions, but not enough into the small details that make a holiday truly great.

For us, it’s ultimately style over substance. There are good things about the hotel, but the negatives outweighed the positives and, sadly, based on our experience, we wouldn’t go back and wouldn’t recommend this hotel.

I really appreciated the sports activities in the hotel which were led by Hazel. She was very profesional in leading morning strech classes and afternoon crossfits (liked those especially)!!!! The hotel is good in general although its very hot in the swimming pool area and water in the pool is too warm. Food however is excellent!

We have recently returned from a 12 night stay at this hotel and we were so sad to leave! We travelled with our two children (age 3 & 5) and we have all had the most amazing holiday! The hotel itself is lovely, we had a family room which was great and the hotel was clean and comfortable. The food was lovely and we particularly enjoyed the Turkish restaurant. What really stood out for us was the staff, they really do go the extra mile! The waiters were brilliant, very attentive and lovely with our children- Elkan was very friendly and great with our kids, Gurhan has some great meal suggestions! We enjoyed a spa treatment which included the children enjoying the bubbles which they loved- this was arranged with Cetin who greeted us each morning with a smile and a chat! Our children enjoyed the wide range of kids club activities- the staff at the kids club were amazing, so friendly and tried really hard to make sure both our children were comfortable and having a good time. Although our son was too young to be left they always made sure to include him in the activities and help him out when he needed it! The manager of the animation team was really friendly with a great sense of humour, he did a fab job organising such a range of activities across the hotel. We would certainly return!