Hotel Grand Beauty

The Hotel Grand Beauty is situated in a tired, lacklustre, depressing, dirty and poorly maintained residential area of Kemer, whose only redeeming feature is that it enjoys a mountain backdrop on two sides. It is almost 1,000 yards (850 metres) walk from the nearest beach, but marginally closer to a selection of small grocery stores, offering a poor selection of items at inflated prices; and a (pedestrianised) street full of tourist-trap leather, jewellery and gift shops. Fortunately, there are at least six budget-priced supermarkets within a mile of the hotel, which is just as well, as the food quality and variety is so poor that you will wish - and need - to supplement your food intake with self-purchased sustenance.

The local buses are little help when visiting the town centre or beach areas, but cheap and regular for visiting other local resorts, such as Kiris, Camyuva, Goynuk or Tekirova.

Good excursion possibilities abound, but book from local agents in the Marina, rather than from hotel reps, to avoid being ripped off.

The Reception staff was singularly unhelpful. Complaints were mostly either ignored, or you were told to complain to your travel company/agent.

Waiters were friendly and helpful! However, table drinks service was withdrawn after the first week, staff limiting their involvement to removing empty plates.

Room cleaning was adequate,

One restaurant with totally inadequate seating/table provision, forcing three quarters of the guests to eat outside by the outdoor pool. Whether you ate inside or outside, conversation was almost impossible due to the loud and omnipresent 'lift muzak. ' Food was of poor quality and variety, unimaginative, monotonous and repetitive. Despite the fact that the Grand Beauty's own brochure claims that it offers an "international cuisine", on 24th April 2010, the only non-vegetable contribution to the dinner menu was dried-up, fried anchovies amounting to an unattractive and inedible mixture of dried skin and bones.

There was one small bar counter in the restaurant (only available at meal times), plus a pool bar situated directly under the bedrooms so that intrusive conversation made having an early night counter-productive.

The cuisine can best be described as "a diet-encouraging representation of food". Moreover, it was forbidden to take drinks into the Lobby area, thereby forcing guests to drink by the pool, regardless of the temperature or weather consitions.

Internet access and the swimming pool were good, as were the sun beds and umbrellas. However, the enjoyment of the pool, etc was spoiled following the installation, at one end of the swimming pool, of an external sound system, which played mostly disco-style 'music' with a heavy beat for virtually the entire day. At 10.45pm on 24th April 2010, this was still operating at volumes which made it quite impossible to sleep. I was therefore forced to go onto my room balcony and to shout at a similar volume to 'oblige' the staff to terminate this mental torture. Other leisure activities were minimal to the point of being spartan.

Inexplicably, the top sheet was removed from my bed after the first night, leaving just one large blanket and another one so small as to be useless, in addition to the bottom sheet.

Hot Water was only available in the morning on six days out of the first sixteen. The Manager (?) admitted on the third day of my stay that the LPG water heating system was defective, but demonstrably failed to make concerted efforts to solve the problem.

The bath tub is only half normal size, so it is impossible for a fully grown man to sit - let alone lie down - in it.

The room phones cannot be used to make outgoing calls.

Avoid this hotel like the plague, even if it means going without a holiday since, at the end of your stay, you will be considerably more in need of recuperation than before you left home!