Swandor Hotels and Resorts Kemer

We have just returned from two weeks at Swandor Kemer as part of a wedding party of around 40 people. Between us, I estimate our group spent approximately £50,000 staying at this hotel.

I really wanted to love it. Aesthetically, it is absolutely beautiful. The grounds are gorgeous, the pool area is stunning, the sea is wonderfully warm and the pier is lovely for swimming and jumping into the water. Most of the staff we personally encountered were pleasant and friendly.

Unfortunately, after two weeks, beautiful surroundings simply weren’t enough.

I actually left feeling like I needed another holiday to recover from this one.

THE POSITIVES

The hotel and grounds really are beautiful and very well presented. The ice cream is lovely, and there’s a little patisserie which opens for a few hours during the day serving cakes and juices which we really enjoyed.

The pier is great and the sea was beautifully warm.

The beach, however, is VERY pebbly. Don’t arrive expecting sand. It is difficult to walk on and I would strongly recommend beach shoes.

THE FOOD WAS OUR BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT

For an all-inclusive hotel at this price point, we found the food incredibly disappointing.

The main buffet was extremely unappealing. So many dishes were mixed together and presented in such a way that we regularly had to read the labels simply to work out what we were looking at. By the end of two weeks, eating in the hotel had become something we endured rather than looked forward to.

Several people within our group also experienced upset stomachs during the holiday. Obviously, I cannot say what caused anyone’s illness, so I am not attributing that to the hotel food, but it certainly didn’t help our overall experience.

The restaurant selection also wasn’t what we expected from the impression we’d been given before travelling.

The steak restaurant was an additional €50 PER PERSON. We certainly hadn’t expected to pay another €150 for the three of us to have a steak dinner after already paying for an all-inclusive holiday.

We also tried the Turkish restaurant and were disappointed there. Choices such as liver and lamb may appeal to some people, but they’re an acquired taste and we found the overall choice limited.

We ended up eating outside the hotel on several occasions despite having paid for all-inclusive.

EVERYTHING SEEMS TO HAVE A RULE OR AN EXTRA CHARGE

This became one of my biggest frustrations.

There seemed to be a charge, restriction or designated time for absolutely everything.

We had a day of torrential rain, thunder and lightning when naturally everybody moved indoors. Unlike other large all-inclusive resorts we’ve visited, there appeared to be no real wet-weather programme.

There were a couple of pool tables sitting completely empty, so my husband asked for cues.

He was refused because apparently the pool tables could only be used at specific times: 10:00–12:30, 14:30–17:00 and 20:30–23:30.

There we were, trapped indoors by a thunderstorm, with empty pool tables sitting in front of us — but we couldn’t use them because it wasn’t the correct time.

It sounds like a small thing, but after two weeks it summed up the unnecessary rigidity we experienced.

Even in the late-checkout/departure area, we were told using a shower would cost €15. After spending two weeks at the hotel and having an 11pm flight home, I found that astonishing.

PRICES FOR EXTRAS WERE EYE-WATERING

Be prepared for some extremely high prices if you want things that aren’t included.

My son reported Red Bull at around £8 a can. Earlier in the holiday we were told Red Bull wasn’t included and would have to be purchased separately. Later in our stay, the hotel did introduce large black bottles of another energy drink which tasted similar to Red Bull.

A tub of Oreos was around £8.

Someone within our group also reported paying approximately €50 for swimming goggles.

Of course nobody is forced to buy these things, but I think prospective guests should know the sort of prices they may encounter once inside the resort.

OUR WEDDING PARTY EXPERIENCE WAS PARTICULARLY DISAPPOINTING

This is probably the part that saddened me most.

There were around 40 of us staying at Swandor for a wedding and, collectively, I estimate our group brought approximately £50,000 worth of business to the hotel.

Yet at no point did we feel acknowledged as a wedding party.

When the bride arranged for a hairdresser to come into the hotel simply to do her hair and leave again, there were problems getting her admitted and a fee was requested.

The wedding party had also booked a professional Turkish photographer, and again there were difficulties getting the photographer admitted to photograph the bride.

But what happened on the wedding day itself probably says more than anything else.

Around 30 wedding guests had already left ahead of the bride. The bride then walked through the hotel in her beautiful long white wedding dress to leave for her wedding.

Not one member of staff approached her.

No “congratulations”.

No “good luck”.

Nothing.

I appreciate that’s a small gesture and the hotel wasn’t responsible for organising the wedding itself. But hospitality IS about the small things.

A hotel accommodating around 40 people who have travelled for a wedding shouldn’t need a policy telling its staff to smile at a bride walking through reception and say congratulations.

That costs absolutely nothing.

For me, that moment summed up what was missing from this hotel.

THE ROOM AND SLEEP

Our minibar was very sparsely stocked considering the heat and the fact this is an all-inclusive resort. We essentially received one of each drink per person. In temperatures like these, I would expect bottled water in particular to be plentiful.

The air conditioning was absolutely freezing. Even when ours was switched off, the room felt like a cave.

One of our friends experienced so much condensation in her room that it was covering windows, mirrors and doors.

I also found the bedding extremely uncomfortable. The sheets felt cheap and synthetic and, as a menopausal woman, I repeatedly woke absolutely soaking wet. I tried sleeping on top of the covers and changing what I wore to bed, but nothing helped.

The single pillow provided was also extremely uncomfortable and I ended the holiday with a very sore neck.

Then there were the unexplained interruptions.

During the first few days, our room telephone repeatedly rang at random times. Eventually I unplugged it.

We were also repeatedly woken by the room doorbell, only to open the door and find nobody there. Once we activated Do Not Disturb, it stopped happening, so whether this was a technical fault or something else, I don’t know.

Whatever the cause, it wasn’t conducive to getting a good night’s sleep.

ENTERTAINMENT

This was mixed.

Some nights were genuinely excellent. The orchestra and acrobatic performances were particularly impressive and demonstrated what the hotel can do when it really goes all out.

Other evenings were very standard hotel entertainment and, after the first week, it became repetitive.

There was also a heavy emphasis on Turkish music, including in the nightclub. We would have preferred a more international mix considering the range of nationalities staying at the resort.

A SERIOUS POOL-SIDE SAFETY CONCERN

This is something I genuinely think the hotel should review.

Guests are permitted to have drinks in actual glassware around the swimming pool.

During our stay, I personally witnessed glasses being dropped and broken around the pool area, including incidents involving guests and staff. On occasions, I felt the broken glass was not cleared quickly enough.

Earlier in the holiday I personally felt something sharp under my foot in the pool and assumed it was a stone.

Later, a member of our wedding party suffered a very severe cut to his toe/foot while in the swimming pool. The hotel’s first-aid team attended to him and bandaged the injury.

By the following morning, the wound appeared badly inflamed/green and required further medical attention.

We suspected he may have stood on glass because of the nature of the cut, but I want to be absolutely clear that we CANNOT confirm what caused his injury.

However, regardless of what caused that particular cut, allowing glassware around a swimming pool where people are walking barefoot is, in my opinion, an unnecessary risk.

Plastic or reusable non-glass cups around the pool would remove that risk completely.

SHOPS OUTSIDE THE HOTEL

There is a large row of shops immediately outside the hotel — approximately 15–20, rather than the handful we had expected.

Some of the sellers were extremely persistent.

During one encounter, my 16-year-old son was struck across the back of the head by a shopkeeper following an exchange after he refused to buy something.

Whatever was said, an adult putting their hands on a 16-year-old is completely unacceptable.

To be fair to Swandor, these appear to be independent shops OUTSIDE the resort and therefore I am not blaming the hotel for this incident. I am including it simply so other families know what our experience was.

We also encountered some behaviour from other guests during our stay that made us uncomfortable, including witnessing a physical altercation between a couple. Again, that’s the behaviour of individual guests rather than something I can fairly blame on the hotel.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Swandor Kemer photographs beautifully.

The grounds are gorgeous. The swimming pool is beautiful. The sea is warm. The pier is lovely. The ice cream and patisserie are great. And most of the individual staff members we encountered were perfectly pleasant.

But hospitality is about far more than beautiful grounds.

It’s about good food.

It’s about sleeping comfortably.

It’s about anticipating what guests need.

It’s about adapting when there’s a thunderstorm rather than pointing at the clock beside an empty pool table.

It’s about not making guests feel that every little thing comes with another charge.

It’s about recognising that a group of approximately 40 people has chosen your hotel for one of the biggest occasions in their friend’s life.

And sometimes it’s simply about seeing a bride walk through your hotel in her wedding dress and saying:

“Congratulations.”

After two weeks, the negatives substantially outweighed the positives for us.

I came home exhausted, disappointed with the food and increasingly frustrated by the rules, restrictions and additional costs.

Swandor Kemer is undoubtedly beautiful to look at.

Sadly, we wouldn’t return and I couldn’t recommend it based on our experience.

To start with the positive feedback: the hotel grounds are really nice, clean arrears and the cleaning in the rooms is good. Buffet restaurant is huge although the food can be quite repetitive, you can find something different to eat every night ( could add more sauces like spicy or garlic which they don’t have or any mayonnaise, mustard etc.). Entertainment in the evening and throughout the day is good. Negative feedback: the room walls are like paper thin ( you can hear almost everything around you) and the majority of guests who are Russians don’t have any empathy or respect towards other guests when it comes to keeping quiet or not slamming the room doors late in the evening or early morning, shouting and almost all the time staying very close behind your back in the restaurant like the food will end and they’ll be left without. Other than this, the hotel is good, but you can tell it caters more for Russian guests and not really for other nationalities ( even the language mostly spoken is Russian even by the staff around the hotel). Also, there is stuff in the room that seems poorly done ( like in the bathroom), or around the sockets, and there is no iron provided which is a first for us( every hotel we’ve been before had one). And the quality of the hair dryer is very low ( ours did not even work). Would we return? Probably, but not sure.