- Turkey Holidays
- Side
- Crystal Sunset Luxury Resort and Spa
It is possible to walk along the sandy beach to Side Village, 3.5 km away or public transport will take less than 10 minutes. Antalya Airport is about 1 hour drive from the property. The stylish guest rooms are richly decorated in warm colours for a relaxing environment. Each unit is fitted with standard amenities including central air conditioning, satellite TV, safe and a balcony. A paradise for couples of most ages and families with children, this modern hotel resort has 15,000 m2 of grounds consisting of an amphitheatre, pools, a superb aqua park with 11 waterslides, plus space for a garden and sun-bathing. Other hotel features include a fully equipped Spa, health & beauty centre, a rich choice of culinary delights covering Asian, Seafood, Mediterranean and local cuisine and entertainment for all. It offers you the chance to enjoy your holiday with its wide and spacious rooms, modern activity spaces and limitless entertainment concept. You can enjoy yourself with 11 waterslides of the region's biggest Aquapark, which promises you entertainment and excitement and raise your adrenalin level with “Big King Cobra” waterslide. Our fully equipped SPA Health and Beauty Centre offers you the opportunity to spend a unique holiday with its skin and body treatments and 1000 m2space. In our hotel, in addition to the SPA centre, there are also Turkish Hammam, sauna, steam room and hairdresser services. The combination of modern architecture with comfort and privileged holiday. Our hotel is 60 km away from Antalya Airport and 65 km away from city centre. It offers you the chance to enjoy your holiday with its wide and spacious rooms, modern activity spaces and limitless entertainment concept.
Having just returned from 8 days, 4 adults, 3 children - ages 7, 5 and 2 I thought it would be useful to give an honest review and also some tips.
Food:
The main restaurant isnt terrible like people go on, unless your particularly fussy there's something for everyone. Its a buffet, quite standard wherever you go in my opinion. They do theme nights.
The snack harbour town lunch restaurant- great choices for kids to fill up on, snacks, chicken wings, pastas, pizza, burger, chicken burger ( top tip, ask for burger no bun for chicken tenders!) Jacket potatoes, donuts, waffles, wedges, chips.
The al la carte- now this is where the hotel is exceptionally let down. In my view, there is no point going. We did Chinese and Turkish. Neither were any good. Chinese took 1hr to feed my children, gave the adults food, 3 courses before even giving kids anything. We left these and went to main restaurant anyway. Honestly huge let down.
Rooms: We had a large family room, 2 single beds, a travel cot then a bathroom in the middle then a large king-size room. Size wise was good, kids had a tv and mini bar, we also had a tv & mini bar.
On first look, the rooms are great - but they do need modernising. The skirting boards are battered, bathrooms need a deep deep clean to get rid of limescale. Beds are okay, but pillows are hard.
Swimming: We had no code brown when there and kids loved the pools. The slides are great, big pool is fab and kids splash slides are perfect.
My issues with these are that the kids splash slide has no staff, my children are young but there were older kids going on, climbing up while little ones going down - stampeeding down slides together. No staff on hand and I raised with guest relations who honestly seemed like they didnt care! This area should be manned. My son really hurt himself on these slides because some older child climbed up the slide when he was going down, he had 3 big bruises and bumps on his head. Nobody offered first aid, just was told its manned. I asked where they said king cobra slide lol. That doesn't have sight of the slides.
The bigger slides, its not clear until you arrive but they are 10+ - you can sign a waiver for 7-10 to go on at check in. My 4 year old was tall enough (120cm) and was given a lifeguard check, he was allowed on 1 blue big slide as it was slow but suddenly 3 days into using it he was stopped. When questioned I was told health and safety and he had been allowed on "to make him happy". To me, thats not safe. I'd much rather he wasn't allowed on full stop than be allowed then not allowed, how do you explain to a 4 year old your suddenly not allowed on?! I did of course and he got over it but it made no sense to me.
Guest relations: hit and miss, some very helpful, some gave standard one line responses.
Tips for hotel
Overall, I would say its a 4* hotel not a 5*. The hotel needs modernising, the food isnt terrible in my view - please don't let reviews put you off, its buffet all inclusive with different theme nights. We had a great time but its not a hotel I would be rushing back too.
We spent one week at the Crystal Sunset Pearl Collection hotel in Side (August 2026), Turkey. Although it is rated 5 stars, we were unfortunately disappointed.
First, almost everyone was smoking almost everywhere. There was no smoke-free zone by the pool, so families with children had to sit next to smokers. It wasn't just a few isolated cases—around 80% of the guests were smoking, including hotel staff. People were even smoking in the dining area, despite clear "No Smoking" signs. We went to guest services to ask if there was a smoke-free or family zone, but they told us nothing was available.
Second, 98% of the hotel staff did not speak English; only the reception and guest services teams could communicate in English, which made day-to-day interaction tough.
Additionally, the hotel is not directly on the beach—you have to walk about 10 minutes or take a shuttle bus. The beach itself isn't nice; it is small, and there are big rocks both on the shore and in the water. The beach bar is also very limited. By comparison, neighboring hotels have lovely, renovated sandy beaches where the rocks have been removed.
On a positive note, the food was good (though repetitive), the air conditioning worked very well, and there is a nice market close to the hotel.
Overall, we expected much more from a hotel with this rating. Not recommended
More of a four star, requires some improvements, too much food available, our 8th time in side so not worst hotel and not best one, not many English, overall not worst hotel,
We had an absolutely brilliant stay at Crystal Sunset Hotel & Spa and genuinely cannot understand some of the 1-star reviews we read before coming. Our experience was completely different and we honestly have no complaints about the hotel.
Firstly, a special mention has to go to Onur, the Guest Relations Manager, who was extremely helpful. We realised after arriving that our TUI rep didn’t actually visit the hotel, and we wanted some help arranging excursions. Onur was fantastic, took the time to help us and made everything so easy.
Another huge thank you to Hussain and Karim in the lobby bar. They were incredibly attentive throughout our stay, but more than that, we genuinely enjoyed chatting to them and getting to know them. There was also another gentleman serving in the lobby bar whose name we unfortunately didn’t get – he always wore an apron – who gave fantastic service and made some amazing cocktails! All of them were such lovely people to have met and even patiently put up with us practising the little bits of Turkish we’d learnt 😂
The pool and beach areas were lovely. We spent most of our time around the adult pool or at the beach and had absolutely no complaints. The main pool did have to be closed for a period on a couple of afternoons due to what we can only assume were children having toilet accidents in the pool. From what we could see, the hotel staff were extremely attentive and dealt with the issue quickly and properly. This is obviously not something we would blame the hotel for, particularly when there is signage displayed around the pool areas regarding the use of swim nappies. Unfortunately, there is only so much the hotel can do if guests choose not to follow the rules.
Our room was lovely and cleaned every day, and the minibar was regularly restocked with a good variety of drinks and other items. Cleaning times varied slightly from day to day, but this didn’t bother us in the slightest – we don’t go on holiday to sit in the room all day!
We also had absolutely no problems with the food. We ate in the main restaurant several times at different times of day and always found plenty to choose from. The pool and beach snack bars were perfectly adequate when we just wanted something quick in the afternoon. We also tried the Mediterranean and Oriental à la carte restaurants, and both were lovely. It was nice to have something a little different during the holiday.
For drinks, the lobby bar was definitely our favourite. It had a fantastic selection of drinks and cocktails, great service and the option to sit outside, so we naturally ended up spending quite a bit of time there!
If we had to mention one downside, it would actually be the behaviour of some of the other guests, rather than anything to do with the hotel. We witnessed people being extremely rude to both staff and other guests at times, which was disappointing to see. It did make us wonder when reading some of the very negative reviews whether attitude and the way people speak to staff might sometimes play a part in the experience they receive. Every member of staff we personally dealt with was friendly, helpful and hardworking.
The location is fantastic too. The hotel’s beach bus runs roughly every 15 minutes and takes around two minutes to get down to the beach. From there, you can walk all along the beachfront into Side Old Town, with plenty of bars, restaurants and shops along the way. It took us around 45 minutes – although that did include a cocktail stop! 😂🍹
Overall, we had a fantastic holiday. Lovely hotel, great facilities, good food and drinks, brilliant location and, most importantly, some genuinely wonderful staff who helped make our stay memorable.
We would absolutely return and couldn’t recommend Crystal Sunset Hotel & Spa more highly. ❤️🇹🇷
What a great time!!!
Onur, absolutely fantastic, so helpful and friendly! Especially with my girlfriend Anna, looking to book trips.
Loved the personal conversations he had with us at the table talking about football (Liverpool) and films and TV series…
The bar team were fantastic throughout..
The lobby bar was brilliant particularly.. . Karim, Hussain, and the gent who always wore the apron behind the bar (never got his name, but always shuck his hand) all looked after us.
Would highly recommend!!
Would definitely consider going here again next year..
Regards,
Ben, from Liverpool.
