Firstly we would like to clarify something. We are not moaners in general as some may imply!! They say in life you should try everything once- the Regal Resort is the exception to the rule. Do not go at all as it is a sham. Put simply, this hotel has and is still being completely mis-sold to decent hard-working people who thought they'd got lucky and booked a 5 star holiday for a reasonable price. Where do we start???

Food..Believe everything you have read prior to this review. It is without exception, cold, bland and almost vegetarian. (By the way, we are not fussy eaters and are always willing to try traditional foods from wherever we holday). Weedani mentioned the "hot" plates always being stone cold, this is no exaggeration. The restaurant manager was totally uninterested when this was pointed out to him and things did not improve. Within 4 days of our stay one polish lady was admitted to hospital at 5am with food poisoning!

Drinks..Again, what you have read is correct. The limited choice in any alcohol was warm, served in old, yukky plastic tumblers. If you did manage to get a drink, you had to be quick off the mark as by tea-time we became familiar with the phrases "vodka finish" and "beer finish". We might add, this is pretty much the only english words the incompetent and rude bar staff spoke!

Rooms..We had no towels for much of our stay. When we did, they were used to mop up puddles of water from the continually faulty air conditioning and leaking bath all over the floors. The towels were never replaced. No cold water in bathroom. Fridge not working, neither did the replacements we received after tiresome but polite complaining. No safe key available so again, after much pestering we were brought a replacement safe with a key. The only problem was that we could easily lift the safe off the wardrobe shelf which clearly defeats the object somewhat! The patio door was wedged fully open by so-called housekeeping using a table. Again, not what you'd call "safe". Luckily, we had nothing stolen from our room but several people we spoke to were not so fortunate.

We genuinely could go on and on and on but be assured we are pursuing full compensation for a total con. The tour operators, ours was onthebeach holidays knew of all these problems since May 2007 but still sent us there despite us raising our concerns more than once. We were told that if there was a problem with our hotel, we could easily move once we were there. This again is untrue. We spent a small fortune contacting them and hotels4u.com plus the local manager at the Yesil Dalyan office and frankly got nowhere. Incidentally, we complained on day 2 of our 2 week holiday (4th Sept) and were told there was nowhere available. We met people who were given alternative accomodation at the Green Beach Resort before they even left the UK prior to this date.

In summary, pretty much everything you are told by your tour company is a lie and in contrast, pretty much everything you read on this site is honest, accurate and unbiased. We would like to stress again that we are fairly upbeat people who did not expect the Ritz but be assured you must change your holiday!!

On a positive note, we had a great holiday as we met other nice folk with whom we spent lots of quality time away from this hotel. We did get moved on day 6 to the Green Beach Resort but had to pay £15 each for the rep to take us there. Don't be put off Turkey or even Torba. It is a lovely resort, just make sure you aren't sold down the river by your tour operator.

Happy holidays!

L and S

I was anxious anyway about going to this hotel after reading the reviews before hand. we had managed to change the last 10 days of our holidays but unfortunaltley for the first 4 days we had to stay at the regal.
The pools and view are the only 2 good points about this hotel.
The hotel is very remote with barely a shop nearby. we have to pay 25ytl ( about £10) to go into Gumbet or bodrum at night.
The drinks were poured out of 2ltr plastic bottles which were flat and warm. I waited 10 minutes the first night to get a drink as the barman insisted on serving all the Turks first. There were flies all over the food as if it wasnt bad enough to begin with........
The steps were terrible a real hazard...i thought people were exagerating but there werent we had to climb 60 steps from our room to get to the top pool and 180 steps down to the main pool and restaurant......All in all dont go...we moved ourselves as the rep was no where to be seen and paid to stay in the ayaz hotel in gumbet for 3 nights and checked out of the regal after the first night . the room was clean but bits of the floor was mising and the door looked as if it had been kicked in a few times...very unsfae..i wouldnt even leave my valuables in the safety deposit box....

my advise...dont stay here

Here are the key points of our complaints:


Regarding the Food:

The food was ALWAYS cold, you could touch the bottom of the hot plates on any given day and it was completely inedible
People were off sick with bad stomachs and one was even hospitalized due to food poisoning
There was no choice or service at the single restaurant on the resort


Regarding the alcohol:

The alcohol would run out at 4:30 PM, all we were told was that the beer or the vodka or the gin was finished
There was only a choice of 5 things to drink, gin, vodka, red or white wine, and beer, there was NO OTHER choice, you couldn’t even buy brand name alcohol as there was nothing else there, the local spirits were barely drinkable
All the beverages were lukewarm or warm


Regarding the rooms:

The rooms were in a complete and utter dilapidated state
There were NO towels upon check in
The rooms were filthy and unfinished
It took us 4 hours to get towels from housekeeping
There WAS NO housekeeping, our sheets were never made up or changed, and after we got 1 set of towels they were never replaced with fresh ones
The air conditioning did not work at all, it took over an hour to get a technician to take a look at it and try to fix our air conditioning
Then the air conditioning broke AGAIN and again, it took almost 1 hour to get a technician to come and try to fix the air conditioning, in the process he ripped out part of the plaster around the air conditioning and made a mess in our bedroom and had the a/c on a manual switch and it made a racket like a truck, it still did nothing to cool our room, despite the 35 degree heat
The ELECTRICITY was intermittent, the power would cut out every morning several times where we would lose all use of lights and any electrical equipment
The TV in our room did not work
There were dangerous wires hanging out from unfinished fuse boxes
The room was not finished, the bathroom had a sink that was not attached to the wall properly as it shook and jiggled
There was NO hot water in the bathroom
There were no bathroom matts or rugs to prevent even slipping on the tiled slippery bathroom floor
The fridge did not work and there was no mini bar
We had no safe in our room available to use
The bathroom fixtures were rusted or covered in mould
There was no internet available anywhere, and no telephones, our telephone in our room did not work
The balcony door did not shut properly nor was there a light on the balcony
The elevator/lift did not work
The pathway section between our room 1631 and 1531 was UNLIT at night, which resulted in a dangerous walk down to reception, it resulted in injury and damage to personal property


Regarding the rest of the resort:

The animation team spoke NO English, it consisted of 2 men who ran around the stage with no organization what so ever
There were no activities or entertainment in English, everything was in Turkish, and considering this resort is being marketed to English speaking tourists, it’s a bit surprising nobody on the resort spoke one word of proper English
The hotel shop was looked after by a very young 10 year old child who was rude and very arrogant. He ran the hotel currency exchange counter, and when asked what the standard exchange rate was (currently around £1 = 2.4 TL) we were told it was a minimum of £20 and he would give us 14 Lira! He was trying to cheat us out of money, and when we questioned this rate as we knew what the standard rate was outside, he became brash, aggressive, extremely rude yelling at us and swearing at us.


Regarding the service:


There was no service anywhere
None of the staff spoke English
No house keeping, and if you tried requesting anything it took hours to get a result
We tried contacting the local agent /hotel rep from Yesil Dalyan Travel. We tried contacting them from day 2 of the holiday to try and resolve our problem and to be moved. We rang them EVERYDAY trying to get somebody to come out and see the state of the resort and NOBODY would help us. We tried calling the hotel rep Mr. Aytac everyday, and we were told LIES, nobody ever came out to help us or go to the hotel, we tried calling the Yesil Dalyan head office and nobody would speak English nor did they have any interest in helping us. It took us 5 days of expensive mobile calls to get any response what so ever. That type or response is completely unprofessional, inexcusable, and certainly NOT 5 star standards. When we finally DID get a response, it was too little too late. We were finally moved to the Green Beach Resort in Gundogan on Friday 07/09/2007 – 5 DAYS after we had arrived, and we were leaving on Sunday, 09/09/2007 in which our holiday was pretty much at its end.

Torba itself is beautiful, quaint and quite charming plus the Dolmush into Bodrum was fantastic, easy, cheap and convenient. Any time we spent outside of the resort, which was majority of the time, was fantastic. We spent a day out on a boat trip, went to the water park, spent a day on Kala Beach (free), and went on the Catamaran Disco, was all fantastic because it was outside of the hotel. The down side was that it cost us sooo much money.

You could write a book about it. A lot of people we met who were staying there the same time are now back in the UK trying to get their money back. I spoke to our friends who are still there and had been moved the same day as us, but they were staying for 2 weeks instead of 1 and they said that the Regal now has no food that is being served to customers because the inspector found it unaccpetable, and that came from the local hotel rep. If you want a proper holiday, book somewhere else, the Green Beach where we were moved to our last 2 days was quite nice in Gundogan, much better than the Regal. Aside from it's actual location in Torba and the views, that's about all the Regal has going for it.

Hi, just got back from 2 weeks at the Regal (2nd Sept). We arrived at 4.30am and was greated buy the bell boy who carried our cases from the road to reception, we booked in with a turkish receptionist who understood english pretty well and was given keys for two rooms on the 1st level. The bell boy then carried our cases to our room. The rooms were basic, clean and tidy, with working aircon, new fridge and working TV, what more do you need, you only need them for washing and sleeping in..... My room had a double bed when I had booked a twin room, I asked could I have another bed for my 15yr old son and within 10mins a bed arrived and was made up for my son (bearing in mind it was now 5am, where elese would you get that quick a service!!).

Anyway, that was our first experience of the Regal!

We ended up having a great holiday and met some lovely English people (Fiona, Charlotte, Jo, Brian, Bethan & Louise, Bev & Richard).

There were people complaining and I felt that this had a knock on effect, negativity breeds negativity!!

Here is what was good:-
Views
Pools
Cleanliness
Relaxed atmosphere
Boat trips booked with Andy
Turkish Bath & Massage
Service
Snack bar - burgers, salad & chips

Here is what was average:-
Food - but we ate for 14days without being ill, plenty of fruit & salad and BBQ 5 out of 14 nights
Drinks - poor mixers so we bought our own

What was poor:-
Turkish guests (not staff) - really ignorant

Please don't be put off staying in this hotel, we had a fab time and didn't let the moaners get to us. The bus stops outside the hotel and its under 10mins into Bodrum which is a very busy and noisy resort., it costs you 60p to travel there if you want nightlife and the markets.

We were glad we stayed in Torba which was lovely, pretty, quite & relaxed with beautiful scenery.

The hotel is not 5* in british standards but is easily a 3* compared with hotels I have stayed in Spain.

If you ask they will endeavour to meet your needs, ie... people asked for chips, they got chips, people asked for glass glasses instead of plastic, they got them. Not many hotels react as quickly to requests as the Regal, they are trying really hard to please the British public.

The entertainment staff can be quite funny if you let yourself go, mix in with them and join in the fun, we did and most nights we had a great laugh....

If anyone wants anymore specific info please email me.

Lisa