Your rating of this hotel:
3.0
from 10
Hotel ratings by criteria:
Rooms:
3.0
Service:
2.0
Cleanliness:
1.0
Food:
3.0
Amenities:
4.0
Hello, dear people planning a vacation in Turkey in 2017!
Already in February, I decided to get my notes about the rest, which I wrote during the rest, and compile a detailed report.
Ask - why write a review while still at the hotel? Is there really nothing to do?
Yes, it so happened that there was time free from rest, and I wanted to record the facts so that later I would not miss anything.
I think before writing a review, you need to say a little about yourself and your family. We rested in a female company - me, my two children, my mother and my mother-in-law.
I can’t say that we are a very wealthy family; we have never been to the Maldives, for example, or Hawaii. But in Turkey they have already been 8-9 times, they have been in Egypt, Montenegro, Croatia, the United Arab Emirates in hotels of the 4-5 level, so there is something to compare with both in Turkey and outside Turkey.
This time we chose between Turkey and Montenegro, we wanted, of course, to Montenegro, but the tickets were very expensive for the dates we needed. In addition, we were traveling with a 3-year-old child and without the desire to cook on our own, so we decided that our budget - 3500ue - more hassle-free and longer we can all relax on the all-inclusive in Turkey.
A voucher for five for two weeks on an all-inclusive basis at the Lonicera Hotel cost us a little more than 3500. Our departure coincided with the under-coup in Turkey, so we still had time to get nervous, whether or not our plane was shot down on the way there or back. Two days passed, other tourists returned safe and sound, and we decided to fly.
Upon arrival, we were put into a mini-bus with 15 more tourists from other hotels, and we went to Avsallar. The guide was a Kazakh, who absolutely did not understand either the history of Turkey or its geography. Perhaps those who were new to it were interested, but we only listened to him when he talked about Kazakhstan.
By the way, he tried very hard to talk about Turkey in an interesting way, although there was 5% of the truth.
During the trip, we got lost and passed the turn to Avsallar and our hotel, which took us +45 minutes of time, and made the trip a third longer.
Before that, we were in Avsallar in 2012, I can’t say that the village has changed a lot. The sea remains the same, this is the main thing.
Upon arrival, we were greeted with a check-in.
Without looking at us, and not listening to any wishes, the Turkish girl from the reception gave us key cards for two rooms in building B, however, she agreed to choose the rooms that are nearby.
Our suitcases were loaded onto a typewriter, and we (naive) went to rest.
Even at the entrance to the building, it became clear that we would not live there. The temperature in the hall was almost below zero, which required every day to take the children to the elevator and back. In addition, terribly, unbearably smelled of mothballs.
The rooms were the worst I have ever seen in my life. Even an old Hilton room in Hurghada would have seemed like a huge royal suite, not to mention all the other hotels that you have seen. Even on the Black Sea in remote villages, in 2002, in home mini-hotels without stars, there were better rooms.
The rooms had NOTHING to do with the pictures we were shown when purchasing the tour.
The entire room was 4x3 steps and the balcony was the size of a stool.
The cunning Turks shoved as many as 2 beds and a sofa with upholstery of dubious freshness into this space, and on the floor there was a carpet terribly smelling of vacuum cleaner dust. There was no light in the tiny shower room. My two suitcases occupied all the space in the room that was free from furniture, so it was out of the question to somehow change the clothes of the children, there was nowhere to turn around.
Mom and mother-in-law had a number like two drops of water.
I left my tired relatives and went to the reception to change the room.
Nobody wanted to listen to me for an hour and a half. The Turkish woman shouted to me several times in response to my requests - your bed is eating! Food eats - go rest! What else did you want?!
Then I saw a Russian-speaking girl, told me what I think about the building and rooms, their size, carpet and balcony, backing up all this with my fears about a child falling out of the balcony of the third floor.
The sweet girl returned two minutes later with new cards. We were settled on the ground floor in building F. The rooms are standard, very similar to each other, but the floor is tiled, instead of a smelly red sofa - another bed, the bathroom is a little larger, and the room itself is a little more spacious, at least there was where to go between the beds and dresser.
But. .
Our shower was leaking, the drain was clogged, and the drain in the toilet was barely working. We covered the hole in the shower with a foot towel and flushed the toilet with the shower.
In the other room there was a huge water stain on the ceiling of the bathroom, but the closet was bigger. The room was next to the elevator, which added to the noise, the windows overlooked the basketball court. The ground floor of Building F is always damp. Things don't dry out. And it stinks of sewage from the patio.
But all this is just "luxury" in comparison with the stink and crampedness of cormus B.
I read reviews where Lonicera is equated with five star hotels. If you do not take into account the criteria, do not compare with hotels in other countries - all the same, Lonicera does not pull five stars. If you are lucky and they put you in a good building (which we only saw in pictures, I don’t know if it exists), you will live in a solid four. If the case is worse - consider that you bought a two-three at the price of four stars.
Now that I have already visited the hotel, I understand that some of the rave reviews are not just from people who first went abroad, they are simply custom-made.
It was about numbers.
Nutrition
With food, things are a little better than with rooms, but not by much.
Lonicera was not surprised by anything in terms of nutrition. Turkey is like Turkey - food stalls, crammed tables, wagonloads of fruit, crates of potatoes, river gravy.
The food consists mainly of seasonal fruits and vegetables, legumes, cheese, cheese, the least meat and almost no fish. No frills, no exotic, everything is the same as you have at home on the market during the season. Everything is prepared without salt and spices, fresh and nothing at all. Thrown into the trays-feeders somehow, come and scoop yourself.
Every morning there is a terrible hype around scrambled eggs and scrambled eggs, toasts.
Worst of all is the case with seafood)) The first few days we ate mackerel. Then they realized that this was it, there would be no other fish. There were sour anchovies as an appetizer and a mash of boiled pangasius. In a large restaurant, there is a salad with canned tuna.
Once we met a salad with shrimp, and once - squid rings. Both products were overcooked and flavored so generously with carrots that they had the same taste, not at all reminiscent of seafood.
If you are a seafood lover, you are in the Adriatic. Yes, anywhere, but not here.
After a few days, we stopped looking for "something tasty" and ate what the Turks know how to cook: rice, roasted peppers, baklava, lamb. We ate the last 10 days in a small dining room. The large dining room is very annoying with the number of people. There are no queues, but there are too many people, noisy and the Turks smoke wherever they want, right at the table. In a small dining room, the choice of "dishes" is smaller, but there are fewer people.
The hotel clearly did not focus on the taste of food, but on its quantity. Plenty of food available 24/7. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, (7-9:30.13-15:00.19:30-21:30), fast food (10-17:00); Kutapy (flat cakes with filling); Vitamin bar: fruits and berries, orange juice. Ice cream and cakes, until 17:00. They say there is also a late dinner, until 6 in the morning.
Already after 3-4 days, I wanted to exchange all these trays and bowls with stew for one, at least a little tasty dinner, served humanly.
There is also a real restaurant in the hotel. You need to register in advance, you can visit it once. Restaurant "fish". Reviews about him were not the best, when they went there, they did not expect anything good.
It was very nice to have dinner in a more or less quiet environment. The waiter tried, brought everything quickly, answered questions.
Dorado ordered. What can I say - the style of cooking is the same, a la the dining room of the hotel. It was possible to stuff the fish with something delicious, or add spices, or at least salt.
Everything else is a farce, the same unleavened stewed vegetables brought from the common dining room in small plates, and (in a fish restaurant) pieces of turkey cremated in butter and batter, and incomprehensible rings, also in batter. For dessert - baklava and plums
By the way, in the restaurants of the Avsallar village they know how to make both delicious fish and shrimp. And cheese has a taste and smell. And vegetables smell like vegetables! With food in Lonicera, magic happens - as if the taste was completely removed!
As many reviews say, you won't go hungry anyway. Yes, don't stay. but you will not feel any holiday or pleasure either. On the first day, think - wow, how many things. And then you will look for a lot of something edible among this.
They also write that everything is cool, but no, not cool. A lot, just a lot, but the same thing, nothing, and not cool))
Yes, we do not make five different side dishes every day at home, and ten different salads. Nobody normal does that. But you can do something delicious.
At home, we can make salmon or shrimp or edible meatballs once a week on even a smaller budget, and at home the kids eat salads and stews because they are delicious, and they didn’t eat in Lonicera.
To be fair, this isn't just Lonicera's problem. When a herd of tourists is herded into a hotel, they eat what they are given. If the chef's salary depended on whether his dishes were bought today, I'm sure he would cook tastier.
I won’t say anything about alcohol, no one drinks alcohol here.
And if you still choose Lonicera as a place to relax and howl from insipid food, go for dinner to a restaurant in a place called Smoke-Chai, they cook delicious trout there, and even empty rice is delicious there, unlike hotel food.
Staff
If you read in the reviews that the staff is wonderful, smiling and pleasant - these are the personal qualities of these people, which are not related to the corporate ethics of the institution. Because pleasantness and smiling very much depends on the mood of each individual employee at different times of the day.
The organization of the work of the staff is very, very shabby, and there is no corporate ethics.
- employees with the same position give different answers to the same question, as was the case during the settlement.
- smile and be polite - not necessary, especially if there are a lot of people in the queue.
"It will do" - the principle of work of employees whose duties include communication with customers.
- cleaners do not have clear instructions for their work. Every day they do things differently. Some things are forgotten, some things are left unfinished. Either they don’t take the garbage, then they leave three towels, then four, then they bring water, then they don’t bring it.
One got completely confused, she forgot everything, except to pick up $ 1. The cleaners don't know a word of English, German, French or Russian. We had to learn the Turkish phrases "come back in an hour", "please change the sheets", "we ran out of soap", and so on.
- the heads of the cleaners, as well as the cleaners themselves, shout very loudly to each other, not paying attention to the fact that people live in the rooms, who sometimes rest or put their children to bed at lunchtime. If there are no colleagues nearby, they like to yell into the radio.
- gardeners also do not try to be inconspicuous and polite. They mow the lawn at 7 am. They shout loudly to each other in Turkish, laugh.
- cars rush around the territory at high speed - they carry luggage and dirty / clean linen. I haven't seen anyone hit, but it's scary.
- beach-boys wash off the sand from the platform where the showers are, and at the same time fervently douse tourists. Once again, the role of the staff is to create convenience and be invisible. Again, these funny guys were not explained that a tourist is a client, and you can’t have fun splashing water with him.
- there are a lot of "informants" on the territory. They are ubiquitous, they are annoying to tears.
They come to a sunbed, they can wake them up, they beg for some water from tourists.
Fur coats, jewelry, real estate, excursions. They got it so that they no longer greeted them. I especially got a Kazakh woman who lisps with everyone like idiots, we met her at least 10 times a day and she pestered us every time with her booklets.
But hell is the restaurant. I don’t know who told these people that this should be done, perhaps this is such a policy, to piss off customers during meals so that they eat less)))
The fact is that the employees of the dining room all the time ply between the tables and literally take away plates from customers. A record of arrogance happened to me,
when the girl came up to my table, looked... I had a bowl of soup that I ate, and on a separate plate - a quarter of a lemon. Without thinking, she grabbed a plate of lemon and dragged it away, taking a lemon in her hand and placing it on the bare table for me. She probably thought that after that I would definitely eat it. Just bravo! What more i can say? So they take away almost everything that is not right in front of you, and very quickly and without asking. In response, we just smiled, it’s useless to explain anything to the Turks anyway))
The most pleasant are the guards at the entrance. They just sit and smile. Always)) And the grandfather who changes towels is so bright and kind. Especially if you give him a pack of cigarettes, he will also give you cleaner towels.
In fairness, I will say that all these incompetent, arrogant and absent-minded people are not to blame. They were simply not taught differently. The leader is to blame, who must either teach or rotate. It may be necessary to organize training for all staff. Maybe find a better manager. This chaos in everything spoils the impression very much. The reception staff are very tired. The Turkish woman who was rude to me on the first day is actually a nice and kind girl if she gets enough sleep. But her working day is such that I don’t understand when she sleeps - from morning to night I saw her at the workplace.
This is also a flaw in the management of personnel.
Hygiene.
Separate topic. A very, very important topic.
I must say right away that the hotel desperately needs a very, very tough hygiene manager, preferably a German, who will drill for all the staff and stop the chaos that is happening at every turn.
- cleaners wash the floors in all rooms with one mop, without rinsing it. Nothing. Never. Specially watched. This is a very important point from the point of view of epidemiology.
- no one ever cleaned the toilet. They just closed it and put a towel on top.
- do not wash the shower room, do not wipe the mirror.
- even after my request to change the pillowcase, because after cleaning it had a red spot, like from blood, the pillowcase was not changed for three days.
- even if the child has soiled the sheet with which they are hiding, they carefully cover it back until you drag this sheet to the cleaning lady and tell them to exchange it.
- the curtains are dirty, not washed for centuries.
- the drain in the shower is clogged, it's scary to think how much. Nobody cares.
- during cleaning on the floor, clean towels and linen in bulk are unloaded on the floor. Yes, just on the floor. Towels without individual packaging after the laundry and fall out of the general package.
- "clean" linen, towels for the room, the cleaning lady carries unpacked on a cart topped with detergents, then lovingly hugs her until she brings her into the room, pressing her to her sweaty neckline.
The balcony was never cleaned at all. We left toys for the sea there, and lived with the sand that fell from them, all two weeks.
- water is unloaded into refrigerators, previously poured onto the ground. Then people put it on their table...
- I have never seen the staff of the dining room in gloves.
- between the fish restaurant and the pavilion for fast food at certain hours, you can watch how the cooks squatting overload salads and something else from one basin to another.
- the worst thing - these trays with food, where everyone picks up, digs, picks. I understand, not the level to put an employee over every dish...
- Poorly washed dishes. Until you choose your own, clean, you need to look.
- Dirty smelly ashtrays everywhere.
- the "zoo" stinks so much that before reaching 30 meters we decided to return to a safe distance and did not see it))
- cats walk around the territory. Perhaps, cats and their waste products touch someone, but not me.
- sun loungers, mattresses - battered, washing and washing them is not included in the plans.
- flower pots, dirty and charred inside instead of urns - who came up with this?!
Entertainment
For us, who went to the sea, the main pleasure is the sea. You can visit guided tours if you are a first timer.
From Avsallar you can go to Dym-Chay - a restaurant on the water, to Alanya - shopping, walking, nightlife, Manavgat - a waterfall, Side - ruins, it's nearby. Away - Pamuk-Kale. Beautiful, but first read the story, so as not to believe in stories. If you believe the Turks, then Cleopatra did not rule in Egypt, but in Turkey she rode all her life and swam anywhere.
The hotel has animation for adults, animation for children. We saw an adult twice - when several people were doing "yoga" and when they led a round dance and ran a train in the sea.
We were not interested, and no one offered us anything. Children's animators were seen on the playground, they drew something and talked with mothers, they did not even greet us and stupidly did not pay attention to our children. Anyway.
The playground is covered, which is good, but it's still hot and boring. Several simulators, slides, swings and all.
The paid entertainment pavilion was also not impressive. A few rides that work and don't work, hit the toad and win the ball, that's all for our age. Car rides are very expensive. The only thing this pavilion exists for is to make an unbearable noise. From morning until late at night, Kirkorov, Nyusha, Elka and other Russian pop crap yells from there.
In the evenings, animators are forced to put on concerts. And so, the poor boys and girls, who have been stuck in the sun all day, reluctantly crawl out onto the stage and try to portray fun.
Once we saw it, once we watched Turkish dances. The dancers were also not very professional. In a word, Lonicera, either do a show or close this horror.
During the day, a recording of an entertainment beach program sounds from the stage all the time, which once probably actually took place in this hotel. She goes all day, and her soundtrack is the same, day after day, for two weeks! At first we thought that this was actually a show, but when a few days later we went to see "this Turk who already wants to be killed" we saw an empty stage and screaming speakers.
It is not possible to ventilate at night until 2-3 o'clock - music rumbles from the street, from which children wake up.
Who is this music for, if everyone in the reviews writes that it’s boring for young people anyway? Mystery.
The only and main plus is the sea. Warm, clean. The beach is large, there is enough space.
True, you need to go in May-early June or September-October. In July, the heat and 100% humidity, when even on a night walk you sweat in three streams and it's hard to breathe, like in a steam room.
Lonicera is a place full of contrasts. I do not know the owner of this complex, but I suppose that he also knows far from everything. It can be seen that the money is being invested, but only 30% is worth it.
For example:
- a new cool building G, with a hall "under Dubai", and smelly carpet in building B, stains on the ceiling in building F and a miserable stage made of bare chipboard.
- an expensive marble countertop in the bathroom in building F and a washbasin poorly attached to it, with a dirty rim between them.
- almost new furniture, fresh walls, and hastily repaired broken tiles in the shower room, not worn corners, generally crookedly attached tiles.
- a large area, a lot of greenery, palm trees, a lot of gardeners, and a dead lawn on the "beach" under orange trees, almost dirt underfoot.
- Oromny children's pavilion, with a roof and good coverage, and its poor content.
In general, management needs to decide - either become a good four / five, or roll down to a three, by default, the second option is more likely.
The staff, the hygiene, the taste of the food, the entertainment. . . apart from the sea, everything needs improvement.
Youth will be bored. With children - dirty, noisy.
If the hotel is for families with children, you need to remove this wild noise at night. If the hotel is for parties - make a show so that everyone wants to go there, and not just sympathize with the animators.
Separately, I will say about the enterovirus, which IS in Lonicer. It is either in the rooms, or on dirty mops, or in the kitchen, or in the pools, but most likely EVERYWHERE.
When we were driving, I read in some reviews that the children got sick. Of course, I decided that these are isolated cases, but we are clean and this will not concern us.
I must say that during the holidays in Lonicera we did not swim in the pools, we ate very carefully and wiped and disinfected everything all the time.
It didn't save us. The youngest child and I fell ill with the Coxsackie virus a week later and were sick for the entire second week of rest.
We didn’t have vomiting or diarrhea, but everything else was there - fever, terribly painful rashes on the palms and feet, sore throat.
The child still had a rash on the pope and legs.
Already at home, after 3-4 weeks, we experienced the "slipping of the nail plate. "
Yes exactly. Your nails just slip off, then new ones grow back.
The rash hurts like a thousand needles driven into the skin. Walking is impossible. It is impossible to sleep - at night the feet and palms swell and itch.
Lidocaine spray saved a little. It had a pink tint that remained on the sheets, and in the morning I also had to listen to some nervous text in Turkish from the cleaning lady, probably indignant that I still had to really change the linen.
Only 3-4 days after the onset of the illness, we began to crawl out of the room to eat and swim a little, so, as I wrote at the beginning, there was a lot of free time from rest.
I don't even know who to recommend this hotel to. I don't wish anyone. Only if you are not very picky about food, sleep like a log at any noise and do not disdain anything)))
I do not advise Lonicera to anyone who wants to have a good rest.
Already in February, I decided to get my notes about the rest, which I wrote during the rest, and compile a detailed report.
Ask - why write a review while still at the hotel? Is there really nothing to do?
Yes, it so happened that there was time free from rest, and I wanted to record the facts so that later I would not miss anything.
I think before writing a review, you need to say a little about yourself and your family. We rested in a female company - me, my two children, my mother and my mother-in-law.
I can’t say that we are a very wealthy family; we have never been to the Maldives, for example, or Hawaii. But in Turkey they have already been 8-9 times, they have been in Egypt, Montenegro, Croatia, the United Arab Emirates in hotels of the 4-5 level, so there is something to compare with both in Turkey and outside Turkey.
This time we chose between Turkey and Montenegro, we wanted, of course, to Montenegro, but the tickets were very expensive for the dates we needed. In addition, we were traveling with a 3-year-old child and without the desire to cook on our own, so we decided that our budget - 3500ue - more hassle-free and longer we can all relax on the all-inclusive in Turkey.
A voucher for five for two weeks on an all-inclusive basis at the Lonicera Hotel cost us a little more than 3500. Our departure coincided with the under-coup in Turkey, so we still had time to get nervous, whether or not our plane was shot down on the way there or back. Two days passed, other tourists returned safe and sound, and we decided to fly.
Upon arrival, we were put into a mini-bus with 15 more tourists from other hotels, and we went to Avsallar. The guide was a Kazakh, who absolutely did not understand either the history of Turkey or its geography. Perhaps those who were new to it were interested, but we only listened to him when he talked about Kazakhstan.
By the way, he tried very hard to talk about Turkey in an interesting way, although there was 5% of the truth.
During the trip, we got lost and passed the turn to Avsallar and our hotel, which took us +45 minutes of time, and made the trip a third longer.
Before that, we were in Avsallar in 2012, I can’t say that the village has changed a lot. The sea remains the same, this is the main thing.
Upon arrival, we were greeted with a check-in.
Without looking at us, and not listening to any wishes, the Turkish girl from the reception gave us key cards for two rooms in building B, however, she agreed to choose the rooms that are nearby.
Our suitcases were loaded onto a typewriter, and we (naive) went to rest.
Even at the entrance to the building, it became clear that we would not live there. The temperature in the hall was almost below zero, which required every day to take the children to the elevator and back. In addition, terribly, unbearably smelled of mothballs.
The rooms were the worst I have ever seen in my life. Even an old Hilton room in Hurghada would have seemed like a huge royal suite, not to mention all the other hotels that you have seen. Even on the Black Sea in remote villages, in 2002, in home mini-hotels without stars, there were better rooms.
The rooms had NOTHING to do with the pictures we were shown when purchasing the tour.
The entire room was 4x3 steps and the balcony was the size of a stool.
The cunning Turks shoved as many as 2 beds and a sofa with upholstery of dubious freshness into this space, and on the floor there was a carpet terribly smelling of vacuum cleaner dust. There was no light in the tiny shower room. My two suitcases occupied all the space in the room that was free from furniture, so it was out of the question to somehow change the clothes of the children, there was nowhere to turn around.
Mom and mother-in-law had a number like two drops of water.
I left my tired relatives and went to the reception to change the room.
Nobody wanted to listen to me for an hour and a half. The Turkish woman shouted to me several times in response to my requests - your bed is eating! Food eats - go rest! What else did you want?!
Then I saw a Russian-speaking girl, told me what I think about the building and rooms, their size, carpet and balcony, backing up all this with my fears about a child falling out of the balcony of the third floor.
The sweet girl returned two minutes later with new cards. We were settled on the ground floor in building F. The rooms are standard, very similar to each other, but the floor is tiled, instead of a smelly red sofa - another bed, the bathroom is a little larger, and the room itself is a little more spacious, at least there was where to go between the beds and dresser.
But. .
Our shower was leaking, the drain was clogged, and the drain in the toilet was barely working. We covered the hole in the shower with a foot towel and flushed the toilet with the shower.
In the other room there was a huge water stain on the ceiling of the bathroom, but the closet was bigger. The room was next to the elevator, which added to the noise, the windows overlooked the basketball court. The ground floor of Building F is always damp. Things don't dry out. And it stinks of sewage from the patio.
But all this is just "luxury" in comparison with the stink and crampedness of cormus B.
I read reviews where Lonicera is equated with five star hotels. If you do not take into account the criteria, do not compare with hotels in other countries - all the same, Lonicera does not pull five stars. If you are lucky and they put you in a good building (which we only saw in pictures, I don’t know if it exists), you will live in a solid four. If the case is worse - consider that you bought a two-three at the price of four stars.
Now that I have already visited the hotel, I understand that some of the rave reviews are not just from people who first went abroad, they are simply custom-made.
It was about numbers.
Nutrition
With food, things are a little better than with rooms, but not by much.
Lonicera was not surprised by anything in terms of nutrition. Turkey is like Turkey - food stalls, crammed tables, wagonloads of fruit, crates of potatoes, river gravy.
The food consists mainly of seasonal fruits and vegetables, legumes, cheese, cheese, the least meat and almost no fish. No frills, no exotic, everything is the same as you have at home on the market during the season. Everything is prepared without salt and spices, fresh and nothing at all. Thrown into the trays-feeders somehow, come and scoop yourself.
Every morning there is a terrible hype around scrambled eggs and scrambled eggs, toasts.
Worst of all is the case with seafood)) The first few days we ate mackerel. Then they realized that this was it, there would be no other fish. There were sour anchovies as an appetizer and a mash of boiled pangasius. In a large restaurant, there is a salad with canned tuna.
Once we met a salad with shrimp, and once - squid rings. Both products were overcooked and flavored so generously with carrots that they had the same taste, not at all reminiscent of seafood.
If you are a seafood lover, you are in the Adriatic. Yes, anywhere, but not here.
After a few days, we stopped looking for "something tasty" and ate what the Turks know how to cook: rice, roasted peppers, baklava, lamb. We ate the last 10 days in a small dining room. The large dining room is very annoying with the number of people. There are no queues, but there are too many people, noisy and the Turks smoke wherever they want, right at the table. In a small dining room, the choice of "dishes" is smaller, but there are fewer people.
The hotel clearly did not focus on the taste of food, but on its quantity. Plenty of food available 24/7. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, (7-9:30.13-15:00.19:30-21:30), fast food (10-17:00); Kutapy (flat cakes with filling); Vitamin bar: fruits and berries, orange juice. Ice cream and cakes, until 17:00. They say there is also a late dinner, until 6 in the morning.
Already after 3-4 days, I wanted to exchange all these trays and bowls with stew for one, at least a little tasty dinner, served humanly.
There is also a real restaurant in the hotel. You need to register in advance, you can visit it once. Restaurant "fish". Reviews about him were not the best, when they went there, they did not expect anything good.
It was very nice to have dinner in a more or less quiet environment. The waiter tried, brought everything quickly, answered questions.
Dorado ordered. What can I say - the style of cooking is the same, a la the dining room of the hotel. It was possible to stuff the fish with something delicious, or add spices, or at least salt.
Everything else is a farce, the same unleavened stewed vegetables brought from the common dining room in small plates, and (in a fish restaurant) pieces of turkey cremated in butter and batter, and incomprehensible rings, also in batter. For dessert - baklava and plums
By the way, in the restaurants of the Avsallar village they know how to make both delicious fish and shrimp. And cheese has a taste and smell. And vegetables smell like vegetables! With food in Lonicera, magic happens - as if the taste was completely removed!
As many reviews say, you won't go hungry anyway. Yes, don't stay. but you will not feel any holiday or pleasure either. On the first day, think - wow, how many things. And then you will look for a lot of something edible among this.
They also write that everything is cool, but no, not cool. A lot, just a lot, but the same thing, nothing, and not cool))
Yes, we do not make five different side dishes every day at home, and ten different salads. Nobody normal does that. But you can do something delicious.
At home, we can make salmon or shrimp or edible meatballs once a week on even a smaller budget, and at home the kids eat salads and stews because they are delicious, and they didn’t eat in Lonicera.
To be fair, this isn't just Lonicera's problem. When a herd of tourists is herded into a hotel, they eat what they are given. If the chef's salary depended on whether his dishes were bought today, I'm sure he would cook tastier.
I won’t say anything about alcohol, no one drinks alcohol here.
And if you still choose Lonicera as a place to relax and howl from insipid food, go for dinner to a restaurant in a place called Smoke-Chai, they cook delicious trout there, and even empty rice is delicious there, unlike hotel food.
Staff
If you read in the reviews that the staff is wonderful, smiling and pleasant - these are the personal qualities of these people, which are not related to the corporate ethics of the institution. Because pleasantness and smiling very much depends on the mood of each individual employee at different times of the day.
The organization of the work of the staff is very, very shabby, and there is no corporate ethics.
- employees with the same position give different answers to the same question, as was the case during the settlement.
- smile and be polite - not necessary, especially if there are a lot of people in the queue.
"It will do" - the principle of work of employees whose duties include communication with customers.
- cleaners do not have clear instructions for their work. Every day they do things differently. Some things are forgotten, some things are left unfinished. Either they don’t take the garbage, then they leave three towels, then four, then they bring water, then they don’t bring it.
One got completely confused, she forgot everything, except to pick up $ 1. The cleaners don't know a word of English, German, French or Russian. We had to learn the Turkish phrases "come back in an hour", "please change the sheets", "we ran out of soap", and so on.
- the heads of the cleaners, as well as the cleaners themselves, shout very loudly to each other, not paying attention to the fact that people live in the rooms, who sometimes rest or put their children to bed at lunchtime. If there are no colleagues nearby, they like to yell into the radio.
- gardeners also do not try to be inconspicuous and polite. They mow the lawn at 7 am. They shout loudly to each other in Turkish, laugh.
- cars rush around the territory at high speed - they carry luggage and dirty / clean linen. I haven't seen anyone hit, but it's scary.
- beach-boys wash off the sand from the platform where the showers are, and at the same time fervently douse tourists. Once again, the role of the staff is to create convenience and be invisible. Again, these funny guys were not explained that a tourist is a client, and you can’t have fun splashing water with him.
- there are a lot of "informants" on the territory. They are ubiquitous, they are annoying to tears.
They come to a sunbed, they can wake them up, they beg for some water from tourists.
Fur coats, jewelry, real estate, excursions. They got it so that they no longer greeted them. I especially got a Kazakh woman who lisps with everyone like idiots, we met her at least 10 times a day and she pestered us every time with her booklets.
But hell is the restaurant. I don’t know who told these people that this should be done, perhaps this is such a policy, to piss off customers during meals so that they eat less)))
The fact is that the employees of the dining room all the time ply between the tables and literally take away plates from customers. A record of arrogance happened to me,
when the girl came up to my table, looked... I had a bowl of soup that I ate, and on a separate plate - a quarter of a lemon. Without thinking, she grabbed a plate of lemon and dragged it away, taking a lemon in her hand and placing it on the bare table for me. She probably thought that after that I would definitely eat it. Just bravo! What more i can say? So they take away almost everything that is not right in front of you, and very quickly and without asking. In response, we just smiled, it’s useless to explain anything to the Turks anyway))
The most pleasant are the guards at the entrance. They just sit and smile. Always)) And the grandfather who changes towels is so bright and kind. Especially if you give him a pack of cigarettes, he will also give you cleaner towels.
In fairness, I will say that all these incompetent, arrogant and absent-minded people are not to blame. They were simply not taught differently. The leader is to blame, who must either teach or rotate. It may be necessary to organize training for all staff. Maybe find a better manager. This chaos in everything spoils the impression very much. The reception staff are very tired. The Turkish woman who was rude to me on the first day is actually a nice and kind girl if she gets enough sleep. But her working day is such that I don’t understand when she sleeps - from morning to night I saw her at the workplace.
This is also a flaw in the management of personnel.
Hygiene.
Separate topic. A very, very important topic.
I must say right away that the hotel desperately needs a very, very tough hygiene manager, preferably a German, who will drill for all the staff and stop the chaos that is happening at every turn.
- cleaners wash the floors in all rooms with one mop, without rinsing it. Nothing. Never. Specially watched. This is a very important point from the point of view of epidemiology.
- no one ever cleaned the toilet. They just closed it and put a towel on top.
- do not wash the shower room, do not wipe the mirror.
- even after my request to change the pillowcase, because after cleaning it had a red spot, like from blood, the pillowcase was not changed for three days.
- even if the child has soiled the sheet with which they are hiding, they carefully cover it back until you drag this sheet to the cleaning lady and tell them to exchange it.
- the curtains are dirty, not washed for centuries.
- the drain in the shower is clogged, it's scary to think how much. Nobody cares.
- during cleaning on the floor, clean towels and linen in bulk are unloaded on the floor. Yes, just on the floor. Towels without individual packaging after the laundry and fall out of the general package.
- "clean" linen, towels for the room, the cleaning lady carries unpacked on a cart topped with detergents, then lovingly hugs her until she brings her into the room, pressing her to her sweaty neckline.
The balcony was never cleaned at all. We left toys for the sea there, and lived with the sand that fell from them, all two weeks.
- water is unloaded into refrigerators, previously poured onto the ground. Then people put it on their table...
- I have never seen the staff of the dining room in gloves.
- between the fish restaurant and the pavilion for fast food at certain hours, you can watch how the cooks squatting overload salads and something else from one basin to another.
- the worst thing - these trays with food, where everyone picks up, digs, picks. I understand, not the level to put an employee over every dish...
- Poorly washed dishes. Until you choose your own, clean, you need to look.
- Dirty smelly ashtrays everywhere.
- the "zoo" stinks so much that before reaching 30 meters we decided to return to a safe distance and did not see it))
- cats walk around the territory. Perhaps, cats and their waste products touch someone, but not me.
- sun loungers, mattresses - battered, washing and washing them is not included in the plans.
- flower pots, dirty and charred inside instead of urns - who came up with this?!
Entertainment
For us, who went to the sea, the main pleasure is the sea. You can visit guided tours if you are a first timer.
From Avsallar you can go to Dym-Chay - a restaurant on the water, to Alanya - shopping, walking, nightlife, Manavgat - a waterfall, Side - ruins, it's nearby. Away - Pamuk-Kale. Beautiful, but first read the story, so as not to believe in stories. If you believe the Turks, then Cleopatra did not rule in Egypt, but in Turkey she rode all her life and swam anywhere.
The hotel has animation for adults, animation for children. We saw an adult twice - when several people were doing "yoga" and when they led a round dance and ran a train in the sea.
We were not interested, and no one offered us anything. Children's animators were seen on the playground, they drew something and talked with mothers, they did not even greet us and stupidly did not pay attention to our children. Anyway.
The playground is covered, which is good, but it's still hot and boring. Several simulators, slides, swings and all.
The paid entertainment pavilion was also not impressive. A few rides that work and don't work, hit the toad and win the ball, that's all for our age. Car rides are very expensive. The only thing this pavilion exists for is to make an unbearable noise. From morning until late at night, Kirkorov, Nyusha, Elka and other Russian pop crap yells from there.
In the evenings, animators are forced to put on concerts. And so, the poor boys and girls, who have been stuck in the sun all day, reluctantly crawl out onto the stage and try to portray fun.
Once we saw it, once we watched Turkish dances. The dancers were also not very professional. In a word, Lonicera, either do a show or close this horror.
During the day, a recording of an entertainment beach program sounds from the stage all the time, which once probably actually took place in this hotel. She goes all day, and her soundtrack is the same, day after day, for two weeks! At first we thought that this was actually a show, but when a few days later we went to see "this Turk who already wants to be killed" we saw an empty stage and screaming speakers.
It is not possible to ventilate at night until 2-3 o'clock - music rumbles from the street, from which children wake up.
Who is this music for, if everyone in the reviews writes that it’s boring for young people anyway? Mystery.
The only and main plus is the sea. Warm, clean. The beach is large, there is enough space.
True, you need to go in May-early June or September-October. In July, the heat and 100% humidity, when even on a night walk you sweat in three streams and it's hard to breathe, like in a steam room.
Lonicera is a place full of contrasts. I do not know the owner of this complex, but I suppose that he also knows far from everything. It can be seen that the money is being invested, but only 30% is worth it.
For example:
- a new cool building G, with a hall "under Dubai", and smelly carpet in building B, stains on the ceiling in building F and a miserable stage made of bare chipboard.
- an expensive marble countertop in the bathroom in building F and a washbasin poorly attached to it, with a dirty rim between them.
- almost new furniture, fresh walls, and hastily repaired broken tiles in the shower room, not worn corners, generally crookedly attached tiles.
- a large area, a lot of greenery, palm trees, a lot of gardeners, and a dead lawn on the "beach" under orange trees, almost dirt underfoot.
- Oromny children's pavilion, with a roof and good coverage, and its poor content.
In general, management needs to decide - either become a good four / five, or roll down to a three, by default, the second option is more likely.
The staff, the hygiene, the taste of the food, the entertainment. . . apart from the sea, everything needs improvement.
Youth will be bored. With children - dirty, noisy.
If the hotel is for families with children, you need to remove this wild noise at night. If the hotel is for parties - make a show so that everyone wants to go there, and not just sympathize with the animators.
Separately, I will say about the enterovirus, which IS in Lonicer. It is either in the rooms, or on dirty mops, or in the kitchen, or in the pools, but most likely EVERYWHERE.
When we were driving, I read in some reviews that the children got sick. Of course, I decided that these are isolated cases, but we are clean and this will not concern us.
I must say that during the holidays in Lonicera we did not swim in the pools, we ate very carefully and wiped and disinfected everything all the time.
It didn't save us. The youngest child and I fell ill with the Coxsackie virus a week later and were sick for the entire second week of rest.
We didn’t have vomiting or diarrhea, but everything else was there - fever, terribly painful rashes on the palms and feet, sore throat.
The child still had a rash on the pope and legs.
Already at home, after 3-4 weeks, we experienced the "slipping of the nail plate. "
Yes exactly. Your nails just slip off, then new ones grow back.
The rash hurts like a thousand needles driven into the skin. Walking is impossible. It is impossible to sleep - at night the feet and palms swell and itch.
Lidocaine spray saved a little. It had a pink tint that remained on the sheets, and in the morning I also had to listen to some nervous text in Turkish from the cleaning lady, probably indignant that I still had to really change the linen.
Only 3-4 days after the onset of the illness, we began to crawl out of the room to eat and swim a little, so, as I wrote at the beginning, there was a lot of free time from rest.
I don't even know who to recommend this hotel to. I don't wish anyone. Only if you are not very picky about food, sleep like a log at any noise and do not disdain anything)))
I do not advise Lonicera to anyone who wants to have a good rest.
Translated automatically from Russian. View original
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