First the positives since these can be dealt with more quickly.
The rooms are comfortable and quite well equipped. The room was cleaned and tidied by the friendly chamber maid.
The location is pretty good. It is set at the foot of a hill. It takes about 15 minutes to walk to either Gumbet or Bodrum - this will involve walking up & down the steep hill. Or you can go by boat to Bodrum (this costs 4 lira each way per person which is about £1.60 so could be expensive for families).
The private beach is quite nice and kept tidy (though there is debris in the water).
Some of the bar/outside restaurant staff are cheerful and friendly.
The gardens, pool and public areas are kept clean and tidy.
Now for the negative stuff.
The prices for food and drink, particularly the latter, was exhorbitant. A bottle of water was 3.5 lira. Ordinary shop prices for water tended to be about 1 lira. In fact there is a little shop about 30 seconds walk from the entrance to the hotel which sells it for 1.25lira.
However you are forbidden to bring food and drink into the hotel. There is a sign at the entrance to the hotel in a number of different languages explaining the rule. Your carrier bags will be checked by the security staff when you enter the hotel. They will solemly point to the message and take any food and drink from you. Where it will be kept for your consumption off away from the hotel. Alternative ways of smuggling things in is via the back entrance if you have caught the boat back to the hotel from Bodrum.
The reception staff are not particularly friendly. For a 5 star hotel (where they derive that standard from I don't know cos it aint 5 star!) I would have expected them to have a better standard of English. We wanted to change the room we had been given. For a couple of days they just shrugged their shoulders and said there were no other rooms available and generally pretended not to really know what we wanted. It seemed to us howerver that they were just fobbing us off and hoping we would go away. Eventually they did offer us an alternative room.
There was little information about the hotel. For instance they said nothing about us needing a card from them which would be handed in to a man who would give us our beach towels. Also there was no list of prices for items available from the mini bar.
There was a lot of loud noise at night from neighbouring hotels which might trouble light sleepers - though it tended to stop at around midnight.
Also be careful of the swooping waiters at breakfast. They are swift at removing plates and glasses. If you take your eye off them for a moment they will be taken away.
Overall the hotel is well located, clean and other than the reception staff generally friendly. However what spoilt it for us was not being allowed to bring in our own food/drink which would not be a problem if the prices in the hotel were more reasonable.
However the prices in the hotel seemed reasonable compared with those at Bodrum Airport, which are on an entirley different level altogether. Where a 1.5litre of water in the shops costs around 1 lira, the hotel was 3.5 lira the price in the airport for a 500 ml bottle of water was 6 lira!!! Incidentally a drink poor burger and chips was around 12 lira, which made the prices in the hotel seem reasonable.
