My wife and I stayed for three days in September 2014. It was a beautiful property, to be sure. We were upgraded to a corner suite which was an exceptionally generous gesture given that we stayed on an IHG PointsBreak rate. However, the quality of service was simply not up to IHG standards. A few hours after checking in my wife and I were chastised by a pool attendant and told "kissing is forbidden" - seriously, in a US-franchised (albeit not US owned) resort in just about the most yabangee/foreigner-infested part of the whole country? It wouldn't have been a huge issue if she had just told us that the hotel has some Muslim guests and to be careful, but her insistence that it's "forbidden" accompanied by an obscene hand gesture just made it feel like this property was going out of its way to antagonize us. The following night we got hungry and ordered pide from YemekSepeti. An hour later I got a phone call directing me to come down to the lobby where the night manager intercepted me and insisted that I not bring it into the hotel for "hygiene" reasons. The manager's solution was for the hotel to order a shuttle van for my wife and I to ride to a public park after midnight and eat our food there. Really? The compromise we reached in the end was that my wife could write and sign a waiver taking responsibility for our own dining choices. Yes, seriously, the management forced us to write our own waiver to eat our own food in our own hotel room. The whole situation just felt patronizing in the end (I made sure the delivery driver who witnessed all of this got a very nice tip!), especially as Konyaalti is quite modern and probably has much stronger food inspection standards than our home belediye/municipality in Istanbul. I mean, seriously, they were basically telling me that the Turkish chains I order from a couple times a week at my home in Istanbul were so dangerous that I needed to be protected from myself? The manager insisted that it was a hotel policy that I should have been informed of upon check in, and the only apology we got was for not having been properly notified. Overall, the paternalistic nature of this property's policies and attitude of its managers left an unfavorable impression.
We were also disappointed with the quality of wifi during our stay (spotty at best) and the management's inability to quote F&B prices in Liras (though they did covert from Euros at a fair market rate upon checkout).
However, I do understand that this property is not necessarily representative of IHG, which we've continued to have great experiences with overall, and the property itself was beautiful (if a bit isolated; thankfully there is a Benzin a few blocks down the beach and a Starbucks a little further down). I would return if the hotel is offered for a PointsBreak rate again, but next time I might have to smuggle a box of cigkofte in our suitcase! read more
