Aska Just in Beach Review We were a group of five staying 6th-22nd March, each with our own room. This was my 78th hotel hotel stay in Antalya Province since 1999. All comments are therefore relative to my other stays. Orientation Our private transfer from Antalya Airport took approx 1hr 20 mins (1hr 40 on the return). The hotel is reached via the D400 all the way from the airport, going 100m past the hotel then doubling back along a slip road to its entrance. The reception desk nearest the entrance and the lobby bar just beyond. Opposite the lobby bar is the entrance to the restaurant. Also on this level is the indoor pool and ‘a la carte restaurant’ which only served as the library and card room during our stay. The hotel is mid-sized, spread over three buildings with blocks A & B tightly sandwiched between the D400 motorway and the beautiful, sandy Incekum/Avsallar beach. Block C is the ‘annexe’ on the other side of the D400, accessible by guests via a tunnel that runs from the basement level of Block B. All public areas are on the ground and basement levels of Blocks A & B and in between them. There are no public rooms in, or external entrance to, Block C. Block A is the one ‘end-on’ in the photos and is home to most of the ’side sea view’ rooms (sea only visible from the balcony), Block B has most of the ‘sea view’ rooms (some sea visible from inside the room) and direct sea view rooms as well as most of the balcony-less ‘land view’ rooms overlooking the D400 among them the only wheel-chair accessible rooms. On the basement floor (‘B’ in the lifts) there are the shops (photo service, leather tailor, optical shop, ‘general’ shop and hairdressers), doctor’s office, gym, spa and a currently closed mini-club. The basement is the access to the outside pool area with pool bar and snack bar (with its own kitchen & dedicated chef). Floors 1+ in blocks A & B are solely guest rooms. And that is it - it is a relatively small and straightforward hotel to navigate. Food & Drinks Generally excellent quality and very tasty. At breakfast there are always eggs (fried, scrambled, boiled, Turkish menemen and omelettes cooked to order), selections of cheeses, salads, breads, cereals, cold meats, fruit, sweet breads, a milk-based dish (porridge, porridge with fruit & nuts, rice pudding, etc.), coffees, Turkish tea, cordials or fresh juice (at an extra charge). At lunch and dinner, there is always fish and a choice of meat dishes, a daily special, cooked veg, pasta & sauces, soups, breads, range of pizzas, chips, then a range of sweets and fruit. Everything is very tasty - quite a change from the usual hotel blandness. Drinks at lunch and dinner are waiter-served, breakfast drinks are a mix of waiter-service and queuing at the tea/coffee drinks station. The snack bar near the pool bar is a real treat with a totally dedicated chef that will make a pizza and fresh chips to order besides the prepared items in the bain-maries. There is also grilled chicken, salads, fruit and sweets. It is such a great experience that when the weather was fit, we usually had lunch there instead of the main restaurant. It really was like have a personal chef. Full marks here. The range of included drinks is quite limited: beer, red & white wine (barely drinkable), vodka, gin, whiskey, raki, baileys, campari and cocktail of the day plus cola, cola light, fanta, sprite and tonic water. There are no included brandy, bacardi, branded drinks or anything more esoteric. Other drinks and cocktails are available with charge (mostly €5 a pop) and subject to availability. Ayran is available at lunch and dinner in the restaurant only. The staff we have encountered are all great without exception. Service levels improve with the German habit of regular tipping (they mostly tip €1 per meal or drinks round). My one-off larger advance ‘bribes’ in TL early on wore off very quickly. They are accustomed to small regular tips. There were notable exceptions who always gave perfect service despite our irregular, more British, tipping habits. Entertainment For those of us who prefer to avoid the animation team then it is another plus that they never bothered us and that the nightly shows were out of the way in the enclosed glass space beyond the restaurant. there was live music one night/week which comprised a singer with a pre-programmed keyboard. There are the usual daytime activities of boccia & darts. Room We have a range of room sizes and locations but we were all very satisfied with our various categories of sea-view rooms. The rooms are of a fine standard, comparable to other five-star Turkish hotels except with a limited range of toiletries (just liquid soap dispenser, cotton buds & pads, bar soap, shower cap) but judging by the number of maintenance issues we had between our five rooms (some dealt with immediately, some not dealt with during our stay), perhaps they are getting ripe for a refurbishment. The safe and wi-fi in the room are both priced at €2/day extra (wi-fi is free in the lobby and at the pool bar, €12 for a week of wi-fi elsewhere). As has been mentioned, the TVs are small by modern standards but have BBC World News and EuroNews in English - more English channels than some hotels have on this coast. There are 10 hotel-style coat hangers in the wardrobe as well as shelves and drawers. There is a tea & coffee making station with 2 sachets each of instant coffee, creamer, sugar, 2 tea bags, papers cups and wooden stirrers. Big bottles of cola, fanta, water and sprite are supplied in the minibar and replenished as required. There is only one power socket at the dressing table. Any USB chargers etc. will have to share it with the kettle. There is only one small, slow lift per block. With the current Covid regulations, only two people are meant to occupy them. The lift buttons are the old-fashioned ones without an up or down direction so that often you go the wrong direction first, only for the doors to open and people are unable to get in. Take the stairs wherever possible! Isolation The D400 tends to isolate the hotel. The nearest commercial centre in Avsallar, roughly 1km away, accessed via the subway under the D400. However there is a great shop a very short distance away. It is a little tricky to find. 1. Take the lift of block B to the basement 2. Turn left out of the lift 3. Take the first left into the tunnel under the road to block C (150m) 4. Admire the wonderful Turkish art prints along the way 5. Take the lift to floor ‘L’. 6. Turn right out of the lift then immediate left to the outside door. 7. If this door is locked, as it was on my first attempt, it has been a wasted journey. Return to base 8. If not, follow the path through the garden, past the security kiosk to the main road. 9. Turn left and walk approx 50m along the pavement 10. To the left there is a 50m path leading to the oasis of ‘Bam’s Supermarket’. It is a medium-sized general shop selling everything from alcohol, toiletries, snacks to fake designer underpants and plenty more besides - all at a fraction of the price of the hotel’s shop. I bought four tubes of my favourite Arko shaving cream at 6.5TL (33p) each and some ayran for my mother’s room which was so cheap it was essentially free. Next to Bam’s Supermarket’ there is a kebab/pide restaurant that also does takeaways and opposite a travel agent advertising a wide variety of local tours. The shop is highly recommended and I wish I had known about this little, local resource when I arrived, rather than find it on my last day. Public Areas There is a nightly ‘table war’ as there simply are not enough tables and chairs for the number of guests. This applies to the lobby bar area as much as it does to the restaurant. If you do not join the rush both ways, you will find yourself at the worst table or with none at all. The regulars reserve tables with a scout sent well-ahead of time. They will not yield one of their unoccupied chairs. Some tables are reserved and held in shifts throughout the day! You can go late into the restaurant when many are leaving to find a vacated table but then there is no table or chairs free in the lobby bar afterwards. If you can’t beat ‘em. join them - we couldn’t so we did. Aggravating the restaurant table wars is the number of tables permanently reserved by the hotel for specific room numbers. Of course, most of the time these are simply left unoccupied, adding to the table shortage. I thought perhaps these were reserved for disabled guests but apparently not. Besides our party has two people with prosthetic legs and two more also with walking difficulties and we were told that we could not reserve a table. Perhaps they were reserved for the occupants of the accessible rooms? I noted the numbers and traced them to non-accessible rooms. It is an inefficient and unfair system, whatever it is. Worst for me was the lack of table service in the lobby bar. We had service occasionally but mostly I was the waiter for our group forever on my feet queuing at the bar and fetching drinks. Sometimes, I would find my chair gone upon my return because the group didn’t notice it being snatched! In this respect it has been less of a holiday for me than I had hoped. The constant table and chair wars stressed me. Those of us who suffer from poor hearing when there is background noise will have a hard time in the restaurant and lobby bar when they are busy. There is a lack of ‘acoustic treatment’ (carpets/rugs, fabric draped over partitions or hung on the ceiling, larger, high-backed furniture etc.). All surfaces except the low-backed seats are hard and reflective. As it gets busier, the din goes up as everyone is struggling to make themselves heard. In practice this means you can’t hear someone on the opposite side of the same table without them shouting. Conclusion Visit this hotel for its smaller, more friendly size, its location right on the beautiful beach, great food and staff and its amazing value (we paid £23.50 pp pn, sole-occupancy of a double side sea view room in March). Avoid if you want the highest service standards, don’t like contention over tables and chairs in the public areas, background noise affects your hearing or want shopping on the door step. If you have a favourite tipple, bring it with you along with your favourite tea/coffee supplies and mugs for your room. Most things can be worked around with advance planning and a little work. Other things not. It may be a better option for the warmer months when it is possible to sit and eat outside in the evenings. If this review has been helpful, please help the Tripadvisor community by giving it a ‘helpful’ vote! Tim Millea, March 2022.…