The Review Site - Pine Bay Holiday Resort Hotel

Relevant Information: The resort of Kusadasi in Turkey. The tour operator is Thomas Cook, on an all inclusive package.
Brief summary of the item: Pinebay Holiday Resort is located in Kusadasi in a beautiful bay surrounded by magnificient nature. Hotel is situated just in the seafront with 2 kms. fantastic private beach awarded by blue flag. Hotel is located 6 km from Kusadasi and 80 km from Izmir Adnan Menderes Airport. In hot summer days the guests can enjoy the outdoor pool and childrens’ pool (30 m²) with 40 cm depth. A place full of light and green, the indoor pool is surrounded by a botanical garden consists of high benjamin and banana trees The indoor pool is heated according to the seasonal weather conditions.
Good Points: Beautiful sunsets.
Comfortable clean rooms (apart from the ants).
Plenty of places to eat and drink.
Excellent entertainment for the children.
Bad Points: Small fridge that stays quite warm.
Very few English speaking tourists.
Evening entertaining a bit repetitive.
General Comments: The hotel itself, is very picturesque. You can stay in either the apartments on the hills or in the attached hotel. We stayed in the apartments that consisted of a separate room with a double bed and a room with 2 single beds/couches, they also had either a small patio area or balcony at the front. The gardens were colourful with hammocks hanging from the trees. We witnessed some impressive sun sets. The rooms were comfortable and cleaned daily, there was a bit of an ant problem in the bathroom. The fridge was small and not very cold, but replenished daily with 2 bottles of water and coke daily.

There was a lot of families with young children and babies there, but the hotel itself is split level so there was a lot of up hill walking and a very steep walk from the beach to your apartment or hotel complex, however the hotel did have a courtesy bus that would drive you around the hotel grounds if you wanted to.

We visited the hotel with our three teenage children and was disappointed to find out that we were the only British couple with children of that age. Most of the tourists visiting were from Belgium or Russia, we only met a few couples that were from Britain, which we did not mind but we did feel sorry for the children as they did not make much friends, which was our main reason for choosing an all inclusive hotel.

The entertainment was good but after a while did start to get a bit repetitive. In the evening you have the choice of the cocktail bar, a small quiet bar inside the hotel. The piana bar, this has tables and seats inside and outside and every night you would have someone playing easy listening music, nice and relaxing but again a bit repetitive. The amphitheatre down near the beach had a show every night at 9, which was sometimes quite good as they involved members of the audience, and then ended the night with their holiday song/dance, once the amphitheatre finished the beach disco started, here they played the latest dance music and from time to time covered you in bubbles.

Day time you had the choice of going down to the beach or staying around the swimming pool, the entertainment here was very good, especially for young children, there was various games and competitions on all day long, there is several bars and restaurants open at different times of the day, with two beach bar/cafes at either side of the beach.

There are also water sports, tennis courts, and football pitch as well as a health spa and gym.

The food was nice enough with plenty of choice but I would not go all inclusive again as I feel the family never sat together for a meal as we were always leaving the table at different times for food. I also felt that I never enjoyed a really nice meal.

All inclusive alcohol consisted of local vodka, gin, wine and beer and a few cocktails that was made from these, sadly for me, no rum.

All in all we had a nice holiday, in a lovely location, but we would not go back there as we felt that we missed out on the atmosphere of being in Turkey and that the hotel felt like it could have been anywhere.

I would recommend this hotel to single couples and couples with young children looking for somewhere peaceful to relax, just be aware that there is a lot of up hill walking!