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- Labranda Ephesus Princess Kusadasi
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Labranda Ephesus Princess Kusadasi
Turkey, Europe
Kusadasi
This impressive holiday complex is perched high on a hill, offering superb views over the Aegean Sea and Pamucak Bay. There is a bus stop just in front of the hotel, providing easy access to the popular resort of Kusadasi eight kilometres away. History buffs might also visit the fabulous Roman city of Ephesus at a 15-minute journey from the hotel. Boasting a beach restaurant and bar, the hotel consists of 2 and 3-storey buildings situated around a central garden as well as five restaurants serving rich and varied buffets as well as a la carte meals. Rooms come with air-conditioning, satellite television and a balcony or terrace, and some rooms are duplex-style for the convenience of those travelling together. Club rooms in the property are chalet style, located within the grounds outside the main hotel. Guests might enjoy a game of tennis or relax with a massage or a spell in the sauna, and children will delight in the kid's club, playground and outdoor pool with waterslide, all during a fantastic, sunny holiday in Turkey.
Facilities
- Darts
- Tennis
- Billiards*
- Beauty salon*
- Spa treatments
- Massage*
- Sauna
- TV lounge
- Entertainment programme for children
- Entertainment programme for adults
- Please note some facilities may incur an additional fee
Due to the surrounding area and the number of steps around the hotel, it may not be suitable for those with mobility difficulties.
The Local Area
Tripadvisor Reviews
4.0 Very Good2,599 reviews
Excellent
53%
Very Good
20%
Average
13%
Poor
6%
Terrible
8%
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Value
Unreal
Loved everything about it all the great entertainment,food and people very kind and welcoming
U get what u pay for
Hotel Summary: This is an all-inclusive hotel with 24-hour drinks available at the lobby bar, but after the late-night snack buffet ends at 1:00 AM, there is no food until breakfast.
Check-in & Reception: There is no personal welcome service. Guests are greeted with self-service lemonade, a non-alcoholic apple drink, and Turkish delight. Due to the hotel's layout and occupancy, early check-in is unlikely, so it's best not to expect it.
Staff: The staff are generally friendly and helpful. We experienced only one rude interaction in the main restaurant, but other employees quickly stepped in and resolved the situation. The biggest staffing issue is at the bars, where there are often long queues because there are too few bartenders, especially during peak hours at the beach, pool, and lobby bars.
Rooms & Housekeeping: We stayed in a Nature Family Room, which has a separate bedroom and living room. Since the hotel changed management after the previous operator went bankrupt, many room features, including the air conditioners, appear to have been renovated. However, the windows and balcony doors have small gaps that let outside noise (especially cicadas) into the room. Rooms are cleaned daily and bed linens are changed every two days, but towel replacement is inconsistent. Because the Nature rooms are located uphill away from the main building, missing towels or other requests can take quite a while to be delivered.
Main Restaurant: The restaurant is not particularly large but usually has enough seating indoors and outdoors. The buffet offers a reasonable variety for its size, with average food quality. Breakfast is fairly basic, without premium items such as cured beef, roasted beef, or gourmet cheeses, though there are plenty of affordable options. Pastries are quite good. Lunch is relatively weak, and during our one-week stay, red meat was served only once as part of a stew. Most meat dishes consist of chicken, turkey, or a single type of fish (usually trout). The meatballs also seem to be made from chicken or turkey. There are around 5-6 types of fruit. Desserts are plentiful but mostly consist of simple syrup-based pastries, cakes, and puddings rather than premium pistachio desserts.
Ice Cream: Ice cream is only available during lunch and dinner in the main restaurant, with just two flavors (vanilla and chocolate). The limited time and location make it inconvenient.
À La Carte Restaurants: The seafood restaurant was excellent and easily offered the best dining experience of our stay, with great food and beautiful views. The Turkish restaurant is the only place to enjoy properly grilled meat. While you shouldn't expect premium steak, dishes like Adana kebab, Urfa kebab, and eggplant kebab are well above the hotel's buffet standard.
Snack Bar: Located on the beach, it serves cold dishes, pide, hamburgers, pasta, soup, nuggets, and watermelon from 12:00 to 16:00. Because it is on the beach, it isn't convenient to access from the hotel.
Drinks: All drinks are served in glasses. Soft drinks are mostly Pepsi products, and ayran is from Yörükoğlu. Coffee from the machines is disappointing despite using coffee beans; the only worthwhile coffee is the Turkish coffee served in the lobby and coffee house. Alcoholic beverages are budget-level local brands. Cocktails are mediocre. We only found Yeni Rakı in the à la carte restaurants. Beer is Efes served from draft dispensers, and the wines are very cheap brands—well chilled but not enjoyable.
Beach & Sea: The beach is artificial rather than naturally sandy, with breakwaters built from stone and concrete. The sea does not become deep suddenly, but it is usually wavy and cloudy. The seabed can be muddy in places, and debris sometimes collects near the breakwaters. Swimming beyond the breakwater provides cleaner water. Finding sunbeds can be difficult. The biggest drawback is beach access. Guests either walk down very steep stairs or use a tractor with a trailer. The trailer has limited capacity and operating hours, so queues are common and boarding can become chaotic. Fortunately, the tractor driver was exceptionally kind and even made an extra trip for us after noticing the situation.
Pools: There are two main pool areas. The activity pool is lively but crowded, and finding a sunbed is difficult. The quieter pool area has several small interconnected pools and a children's pool. It is better for relaxing than serious swimming, and sunbed availability is also limited.
Water Slides: The "aquapark" is modest, consisting of three slides and a children's splash area. It operates only during limited hours (10:00–12:00 and 14:00–17:00). It feels somewhat outdated and could use refurbishment.
Wine House: Open from 8:00 PM to 11:00 PM, it offers a wonderful atmosphere with live music on some evenings and rock music on others. Unfortunately, the wine quality is poor, including the paid option.
Entertainment: There are different evening shows every night except Sunday, along with a nightly mini disco for children. The entertainment team provides enough variety that performances did not become repetitive during our one-week stay.
Hotel Layout: The hotel is built into a hillside, with the main entrance on what is effectively the eighth floor. The views are spectacular, but the steep terrain makes getting around tiring, especially if staying in the Nature section. The hotel has only three elevators for around 1,200–1,300 guests. Elevator waits during meal times are long, partly because there is little queue discipline. One elevator frequently broke down in the summer heat, making waits even worse. Given current prices, the hotel is only slightly cheaper than many competitors. If you arrive with realistic expectations and accept its shortcomings, it can still provide good value.
Guests: The hotel attracts many domestic Turkish guests because of its competitive pricing, along with Turkish expatriates, Russians, and visitors from the Balkans. Since there are many Turkish and expatriate guests, we did not notice preferential treatment toward foreign tourists. The hotel mainly works with ETS, Anex (which also operates the hotel), Corendon, and TUI.
Overall Impression: The hotel offers good value for money, particularly if you manage your expectations. Its biggest strengths are the friendly staff, beautiful hillside views, excellent seafood à la carte restaurant, and varied evening entertainment. Its main weaknesses are the difficult hillside layout, crowded elevators, limited beach access, inconsistent housekeeping, understaffed bars, average buffet food, and budget-quality beverages. Despite these drawbacks, we left satisfied because we knew what to expect.
Review by Emrah D Istanbul
Avoid Avoid Avoid
Avoid, most definitely you will be disappointed, definitely not a 5star hotel, hardly 3 star, old , outdated, dirty, overpriced for the service they provide, very hard to access, restaurant, pool and beach, not suitable for old people or people with disabilities or injuries, people fighting over sunbeds every morning, drinks quality of a 2 star hotel. Some of the staff very helpful and nice, not all. Avoid Avoid Avoid
Avoid at all costs
Our stay at Asteria Ephesus has been, without question, the worst family holiday we have ever experienced.
From the moment we arrived, it was clear that this hotel did not meet the standard of a five-star resort. The hotel is tired, dated and in desperate need of refurbishment. The food was awful—poor quality, repetitive and nowhere near what we expected from a five-star all-inclusive hotel. We regularly saw flies around the buffet food, which raised serious concerns about hygiene.
We booked the Italian à la carte restaurant expecting something special, but were extremely disappointed. On arrival, the salads had already been plated and left sitting on the tables with flies on them before guests had even been seated. The pizza served was little more than bread with cheese. When I questioned the manager, he produced a pre-made pizza and explained that they prepared them in advance "to save time". In my opinion, that is not an à la carte dining experience.
There were also serious safety concerns. We witnessed a young child fall onto a broken wine glass in the baby pool area, sustaining what appeared to be a deep cut to his hand. Seeing broken glass in an area intended for young children was shocking.
The most distressing part of our holiday began when both of our children became seriously ill. Our daughter became violently sick in the early hours of the morning, and later our son developed the same symptoms. We informed reception that our room needed to be cleaned because the children had been vomiting and asked for a taxi and directions to the nearest hospital.
The hotel directed us to a hospital that was closed, forcing us to travel a considerable distance to another hospital while caring for two very sick children. Both children were diagnosed with acute gastroenteritis, prescribed medication and discharged. We have retained the medical reports confirming their diagnosis.
Before leaving for the hospital, we specifically requested that our room be cleaned because the children had been repeatedly vomiting. When we returned at approximately 3:00 a.m., the room had still not been cleaned. After spending hours in hospital with two sick children, returning to a room in that condition was completely unacceptable.
When I raised this with the night manager, I recorded part of a conversation between members of staff in Turkish. The conversation has since been translated and appears to relate to coordinating the transport of patients rather than responding to our complaint. Regardless of what was being discussed, our concern remains that our request for the room to be cleaned had still not been acted upon.
Since then, the situation has become even more concerning. My wife has also become unwell with similar symptoms, meaning three members of our family have become ill during our stay.
I have also personally witnessed two other children vomiting in the hotel and have evidence of another guest becoming ill with similar symptoms. The attached photograph shows one child vomiting in the hotel lobby. I also witnessed another child vomiting but felt it would have been inappropriate to photograph them. I only took the attached photograph because I believed it was important to document what I personally observed.
While I cannot say what caused these illnesses, I believe the food served at the hotel should be considered as a possible source and investigated thoroughly. Given the number of people we have seen become ill, I believe this should be treated as a potential public health issue and investigated as a matter of urgency.
The impact on our holiday has been enormous. On medical advice, our children had to remain isolated for 48 hours after their last vomiting episode. As a result, my wife and I have had to eat separately so that one of us could stay in the room with the children while the other collected food. The family holiday we had looked forward to for months has effectively been ruined.
Although some members of staff were genuinely friendly and helpful, they were let down by the overall management and standard of the hotel. Throughout this experience, we felt there was a lack of urgency, empathy and ownership when dealing with our concerns.
We have submitted our children's medical reports and raised a formal complaint with Click&Go. We have also explained that when we contacted Blue Insurance during the medical emergency, our policy number was not recognised, meaning we were unable to access the Travel GP service when we needed it most.
Based on our experience, we cannot recommend Asteria Ephesus. We believe the circumstances surrounding the illnesses experienced by our family and other guests, together with the hygiene and safety concerns we witnessed, warrant a full investigation.
Extremely bad
I do not recommend this hotel to anyone.
This was one of the worst hotel experiences I have ever had. The hotel was extremely dirty, and the food quality was very poor. The rooms had almost no amenities and were very basic.
Housekeeping was unacceptable. They never properly cleaned the rooms—they only made the beds and left everything else untouched.
There was almost no entertainment, and the music was very poor. The entire hotel looked old, dirty, damaged, and poorly maintained.
The pool bar was especially disgusting. Used glasses were not properly washed, and drinks were often served in dirty glasses that had clearly been used before.
The hotel was full of flies. There were so many flies in the restaurant that it was almost impossible to enjoy breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
Overall, the service was nowhere near the standard expected from a hotel with this rating. In my opinion, it deserves no more than one star. I am genuinely surprised by its current star rating and wonder why no one seems to inspect or monitor the quality of this hotel.
I strongly advise everyone to stay somewhere else.
