Rixos Premium Tekirova - The Land of Legends Access

Rixos a big name i think….but it wasn’t a big thing for us. Ok big nice hotel but nothing else. Everything is so far from the hotel. The breakfasts and the dinners were fantastic. No entertainment at nights just live music what was boring. Lot’s of kids…there was place for kids where they had pools,slides ect. so i didn’t understand why parents brought the kids to the main pool and let them shouting, running and jumping into the pool. I have a 15 years old daughter but when she was younger i never let her to disturb other people when they tried to relax.

This is gonna be a long review. 7 days family holiday - 2 adults + 10yo. Our holiday started really great ! We arrived to the hotel almost at 2am. For those travelling with TUI and using their shuttle bus - if there is no traffic, transfer is about an hour. We had 2 stops at other hotels. When we got to reception first thing we were asked was if we are hungry. We were absolutely starving so it was nice to be offered food and drink. Buffet was very limited at that time a night but it was more than enough for us. We returned to reception to check in, it only took a moment. Gentleman at the reception desk was very pleasant, I was impressed seeing him talking Simultaneously in Russian to some lady who was complaining about something, Turkish to his colleague who was helping and in English to us. Are they speaking Queens English ? No, but nevertheless people who we came across that night spoke good English and we understood everything we needed to know. If you want perfect English go to Spain or Bognor Regis or pick up few words even in Russian orTurkish - don’t be ignorant about other languages ! We got free upgrade from Deluxe Sea View room to Suite with swim up pool, very grateful for that. Our room was spacious, clean, AC working perfectly. Suites have access to Veranda Restaurant which is for suites only. Nice food nice service can’t really complain about anything there. The only slight and very minor inconvenience is that suites are bit far out from all the action at the main pool and bars but you get little shuttle bus which is essentially a golf buggy and they drive you around the hotel grounds which is nice :) You can cut through tennis courts to the main pool and be there in no time. Definitely need to get there early to get a sun lounger/round bed things. If you in one of those suites you can walk up to the veranda for drinks all day, I think they do room service but we didn’t use it. Also almost every day at 5pm there is two guys going around and bringing bottle of alcohol (usually wine or Prosecco) plate of fruit and some sweets is chocolate, backlava, turikah delight. Very nice people, it’s all free but we tipped them anyway. We really enjoyed main pool, loads of games and activities going on though out the day - beach volleyball, water polo, all sorts of aqua, darts and many many more. The entertainment team is great, good speaking English as well as Russian and Turkish of course. Drinks are served all day by waiters on roller skates but you can walk up to the bar to order drink. With the corner of my eye I saw swimming lessons at the main pool and the guy was awesome with kids, also speaking three languages. Not sure if there is extra charge for this. For the afternoon/evening really recommend food court and drinks at lotus bar. Go to lotus bar before 4pm to see Mert. He is absolutely fantastic mixologist, if he ask what do you want for drink just say “Surprise me!” And he will come up with something absolutely amazing, he also makes great White Russian. In the late evening at lotus bar stage there is always some sort of entertainment, we saw MJ tribute show which was fantastic and illusionists who won (I think ?) Turkey got talent or something like that, they were also good. Get there early ish (definitely before 9pm ! To get best seats, otherwise it’s crowded and no free tables left) Other than that there is a lot of party music in the evening with decent space to dance, it’s a electronic music so not everyone taste but recent stuff. Next to lotus bar there is ice cream and waffle place open till 11pm, also highly recommended to try. Shisha lounge behind lotus bar also nice, $40/800 Turkish for one. They serve drinks there (table service) open from 11am. A la crate restaurants…. Not bad but not the best. TUI is offering a deal that you can get one free meal at the a la carte. We wanted to get that book as soon as we woke up the next day, you need to go to guest relations desk to do that. We were advised that there was NO spaces for free meal for the whole week that we are there and perhaps next week would be good…. We explained that we are leaving Monday so that’s no good to us. Lady was apologetic but there was no spaces so we couldn’t do much. She offered to book us in to Mexican restaurant - Cactus, which was payable…$25 per adult and $10 for a kid. We took it but it wasn’t the best Mexican we had, but I wouldn’t expect that, in Turkey we wanted to try Turkish restaurant… People restaurant at the ground floor next to the pool is decent, free a la carte, no reservation needed. There is few Buffets and they are decent, the main one is so big and so many choices, it’s really hard to have same thing every day ! Personally I enjoyed it and this was perhaps the best buffet we had on all inclusive holiday. If you want to do some shopping there are shops inside the hotels which are quite expensive. You can grab a taxi and go to Kemer Centre, it’s a huge market which sells all sorts including tone of fake stuff (bags, watches, clothes). It’s about 18km and the price should be around 300-350 Turkish lira which is about 14£. They have to have meter on and that’s the price we got on the meter. You can try to agree to set price with no meter on your own responsibility, but legally they need to put the meter on so pay attention when getting in to the taxi. We almost got done on a taxi when the guy said he will collect us in 3h from the same spot and we can pay him later. When we walked away we saw that he didn’t drove away and parked up properly and looks like he is waiting. After short deliberations we realised that he is probably waiting for 3h with the meter on charging us ! We walked away a bit and gone back and he was still there. Gone back to the taxi and said we want to pay now and we will take bus back (we didn’t :) ) and yes his meter was on ! That was almost very expensive mistake, so pay attention. If the photographer randomly asks to take photo of you or your family - do it ! You don’t need to pay anything to get them done and they take a lot of pictures. Go to photo desk in main building and look for your photos there are very good, $13 for a picture which is semi expensive, but they are very good. Aqua park is nice - lazy river is okay it’s not great but extra brownie points for being long. It’s busy and open only at set time not all day. Big slides are nice but they will send you flying so make sure you have you swimming costume strapped on properly ! Strict weight restriction which they follow religiously. All in all we enjoyed our stay, I can’t name all the great staff we encountered as I don’t remember all their name but Mert from Lotus bar and Yusef from darts really stand out, they will remember your name after 1st day. Everyone are always smiling, always trying to help even if they don’t understand very well, the place was spotless clean, so many grounds staff everywhere, cleaning ladies on the go all day doing great job ! Final tips: - For round beds by the by the pool you need to get there by 7am latest they get busy quick. For normal sun beds until 9am you should be good, after that all busy. Loungers on the beach always some spaces left. There are some rules on round beds on how long beds can be left unattended and after that they take you stuff away to lay property office - they do enforce it. They go around and check, I saw the man taking photos before and after to see if beds was changed and then he will check time and take stuff away, so don’t be a di*** and leave bed taken for whole day if you won’t be using it. - Pay attention in the taxi they will try to mug you off. - In the market haggle, you can cut the price probably twice.

Basically i would like to firstly point out the location of the hotel since it's amazing. You are rounded up by extraordinary mountains and become attached to the view. We stayed at the pool villas area since they are a bit more quiet and much more suited for family vacation and the general hospitality around there really surprised us. The Olive Tree Club which is special team for pool villas are taking care of you from WhatsApp and the Veranda restaurant there offers good service which makes you special. If you are looking for a entertainment that aims the young fellas you will be disappointed since general entertainment is aimed for the families. Lastly the kids club and their activities are very fun according to our boy. I recommend this hotel and a little tip from me is please choose the summer season.

Beautiful holiday. We had a very relaxing time, everything was premium and all the staff really went the extra mile. Beautiful food, recommend the ice cream parlour. Drinks were all branded and the cocktails wouldnt have been out of place in a city centre bar.

A half a year ago we stayed in different Rixos (Bodrum) and really loved it. Despite most amenities were still closed the stay was really relaxing and we felt that the hotel staff cared about our stay. In Rixos Tekirova it was quite a different experience. It is not just the amenities (pool area, sun beds, restaurants) were not on the same level (and they were far from Rixos Bodrum). The staff just didn't care. There is no information on what's happening in the hotel. In Bodrum, the hostess sent us the schedule for the day in Whats App, greeted us personally every day in the lobby, asked if everything is OK, how they could help etc. The bar staff level in Bodrum was also much higher in my opinion. The check-in was really messy: - No welcome drink. - One of the rooms we booked was the wrong type (double instead of twin). When I asked to change it - it was changed to twin room, where beds were merged to a double bed. I asked to fix that. I was promised that it would be fixed immediately. The next morning my mom told me that it wasn't fixed. - Another issue on check-in - I asked in the email one day before to ensure that baby cot will be in our suite as we arrived late. Of course, it wasn't there. We called 3! times and waited over an hour for the cot. It was OK stay, but it wasn't really great. Nothing major to complain but nothing outstanding either. We had higher expectations from Rixos. One highlight of the stay was the kids club. It is really big, a lot of things to do for kids! A few "low-hanging fruits" to fix: - change the off-season entertainment location. They run evening entertainment in the "bar' on the pool level. Just a completely soulless room with terrible acoustics and cheap furniture. You guys have plenty of space, just change the location and renovate this room. - send your bar staff to some basic cocktail courses. so they learn how to make cocktails (and measure ingredients using jiggers), not just how to throw bottles. Most of my friends can do better cocktails, and none of them work in bar/hospitality.

Positive Great food, lots of choice, nice settings, inside and out. Negative Smoking in restaurants and bars. Being used to non-smoking bars and restaurants elsewhere this is a BIG negative. Consider having non-smoking areas in restaurants/terraces? “Land of Legends Access” Marketing doesn’t mention it is 60 miles away and that the bus trip can be one of the thrill rides. Once there it was ok but not all major rides were running. Not sure it’s worth 4 hours on a bus to get to. Buses Outward to Land of Legends Bus in poor condition - broken air vents, some seats stuck in recline, various armrests stuck. Hard to tell if suspension in poor state or erratic driving - could be both. Driver had Apple earbuds in and he clearly couldn’t hear his indicator beeping as it often continued for longer than necessary. Pulled into BP station to fill up and for requested toilet stop. We were there for 20 mins with air con off - why? Return from L of L Much better coach and driver. Stopped at BP garage - less than 5 mins. Drove quickly but never enough to cause concern. Bus to airport Overpowering smell of tobacco smoke in the bus when it arrived - made us feel queasy. Cleared a little once aircon on but still all pervading. I can smell it on my clothes as I write this on the flight home. Driving very fast - 95kph in 70 zone (60 mph in a 43 mph zone from my phone satnav), also talking on mobile phone at one point at this speed. Not good. Room Ok, quality fittings and furnishings, not as roomy as expected, but well serviced and supplied. Cleaning staff excellent. Nowhere to put bags/cases. Very comfortable bed. Of 17 “English” TV channels only 2 were actually in English, both news channels. Kids club Great, staff all friendly and enthusiastic, Julia the manager was outstanding. Our 5 year old granddaughter loved it, especially the discos. Water park Limited selection of rides, disappointing restrictions on individual slide - 85kg is not an exceptional weight. Suicide slide too fast - banged my head several times on the one run with the g force. Enjoyed the other rides on the adult section, kids section good too. Lazy river good but there were less than 6 rings available- on a river this size it is a waste. Gardens very pleasant and well kept. Beach well equipped but loungers etc starting to look tired. Dark sand/pebbles not the “white sand” mentioned in some marketing. Towel and bar service very good.

Clean and fresh hotel. Staff is very helpful, especially our assistants Merve and Vani (almost 24 hours of assistance). Food is excellent and tasty. There are a lot of activities so you are never going to be bored. Sea is close and really clean.

My family and I have been guests 5 times already, and this one is really not at the level of its rating and price. The hotel is outdated, the meals are very basic or very empty. During a conference, they improved the food a little, but then the same again. Not to mention the staff which is disastrous. When we were finally able to make a reservation at the ala carte restaurant, a shock followed upon arrival. We had a reservation for 11, but the table was for 7. When I showed them their confirmation in the application, they just looked at each other strangely. After 45 minutes of not the most appropriate communication, they added one table for 4 (disaster). Oh, and I would add that during dinner the restaurant was half empty. We have already read all this in the comments of the guests, but unfortunately we did not believe them. I will very briefly say NEVER AGAIN

A must read for couples looking to book this hotel... This is going to be a long review, so I'll start from the beginning. We arrived in Antalya at around midnight, waited until around 1.30am in which my partners case did not arrive (not the hotels fault) but an already irked couple made their way to the hotel, and I was thinking to myself - it will be fine once we get there and the 5* hotel we had signed up for will surely cheer us up. How wrong I was. We arrived around 2am, to a rather miserable reception host - who'm we'd expressed we had lost our luggage to (and he really couldn't give two hoots, which made me think this happens all the time). We weren't offered any food or drink just a simple check-in process and off we went to our room. We'd paid to upgrade to a sea view room and what awaited us? A disabled access room on the first floor. Albeit, it was dark but there was no way this was a sea view room, the bathroom was dirty and we couldn't even see in the mirror (photo attached), so where exactly is this £400 upgrade we paid for? Because this surely isn't it. So, really irked this time we went down to reception to be told this is in fact a sea view room (photo of view attached) and that there's nothing wrong with it. We stood our ground to the rude and unhelpful gent on reception to be told there's no rooms left in the complex (which was utter rubbish) and we will have to wait until morning - brilliant. So me and my luggage-less fiancé went back to our room with me in tears. So this left quite a sour taste in our mouth, a great way to start a holiday - not. So the next morning we went down to reception and was told to leave our room (at 9am) and our new room would be ready by midday. So, we wen't back at midday, not ready, 1pm, not ready.. you get the gist. 5pm we got the keys to our new room - so we didn't have a room the whole first day of our trip. No apologies, nothing. I had read the reviews about the difficulty booking the restaurants, so I was keen to do this through the WhatsApp service. As we were staying for 10 days, we wanted to try every restaurant and upon booking was told we would get one free meal in three of the restaurants. So I tried to book all these for the week ahead, to be told you can only book one free restaurant at a time, and after you have eaten that meal are you then allowed to book the next. Stupid. Especially when the first availability for one of the free restaurants was day 6 into our holiday. They don't want to help you and I got the impression they don't like you to eat in the free restaurants. However, you could book the restaurants you paid for in advance so we did that. The Mexican was excellent, as was our host (I can't remember his name) but it was by far the best food and service we received the whole trip. In my opinion, the Italian and fish restaurants were a waste of money. It is also worth noting that all the food in the a la cartes are served at some point in the main buffet. As for the free restaurants, which we had to beg borrow and steal to get into - mandarin (Chinese) was our favourite - shoutout to Yagmur who understood our frustrations and managed to get us booked in. To be fair, lots of complaints about the buffet on here - I'm not mad on buffet food, but the choices were endless and they always served fresh stone baked pizzas each night - which were lovely and a safe option for fussy eaters. The drinks listed as 'premium' are most certainly not. For Aperol Spritz lovers like me - you'll be disappointed to know they do not serve these, but a rather strange alternative. The consistency across bars is actually wild, there seems to be no cross communication on the drinks menu. The best drinks are in the lobby bar hands down, but again not the premium drinks as advertised. I gave up having cocktails in the end as you just did not know what you were going to get. So I stuck to Prosecco or wine - which were both nice. The sunbed situation - there are around 30/40 round sunbeds on a pier into the sea - they are lovely, but good luck trying to get on one. We played tennis at 7am one morning and was like perfect, we will go down at 6.30 put our towels on**, play tennis for half an hour and go for a swim when we get back. It's worth noting that it was still dark at 6.30am - so we went down with our belongings to see all beds had been reserved, with not a soul on there. Just one man smoking who laughed at us and said in broken English - people come down at 3am to do this. On holiday? I don't think so. We did manage to get on these towards the end of the day (3pm/4pmish) probably because the people on there before are so tired from waking up at 3am to reserve them!!! However, sunbeds at the beach and pool were not an issue. There is no drinks service on the beach - there was one guy on rollerblades serving the whole beach, which meant if you wanted a drink you had to go up and get it (not a problem for us, I'd actually rather go to the bar. But I know this might be a deal breaker for some). The pool sunbed service was a lot better, they had 4 people covering the pool, which was crazy cause the beach was way busier. **They say you can't reserve sunbeds for 90 minutes and that they will remove towels past this time. They did not do this. So, if you can't beat them, join them. The waterpark was suprisingly really good - we had it to ourselves most of the time and was a lot of fun. Looks old and rickety, but it was well worth a visit (or three in our case!) Activities - there's loads of sporty activities to get involved in, we just really wanted to do paddle boarding. We were told you have to book the day before and then they'll let you know the next day if you had booked on. So we tried to do this a number of times with no luck - it was really frustrating and there just seemed to be no one willing to help. So we were sad we couldn't do that. But after the disappointments of all the above we just kind of accepted that this wasn't going to be the 5 star experience we originally thought. So, the weather was lovely, and the facilities are lovely but in no way is this a 5* hotel. It's a glorified 3*. Staff are miserable and unwilling to help, asking for a drink sometimes felt like you were bothering them. I wouldn't return to Rixos premium tekirova. You can get way more for your money in other resorts and locations in my opinion. For couples staying - it is a very family friendly hotel, didn't bother us but it may some. Last but not least, I managed to accidentally leave my work phone there. They said they couldn't post electrical items outside the country, but were willing to put it in a taxi to the airport for £200. Luckily, I contacted a lovely Scottish couple who were willing to help me. The hotel did not make this easy though, asking for my phone passcode and all sorts when I had just simply instructed them to give the couple my phone. A very uncomfortable WhatsApp call later - they gave in and handed my phone over. Again, shoutout to Yagmur who sorted this for me.

Very good hotel.Especially want to say some words about headwaiter Gökhan GÜLDAL, he made this trip much better and funnier.Amazing service!Me and my family were literally waiting till the end of the day to see him. His trick with the cup is incredible.Best person in the whole Turkey!Teşekkür ederim