Name: Villa Side Residence
Price range: from £462.98pp (7 nights includes flights and transfers)

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The best hotel in Turkey, we come to this hotel second time to celebrate New Year and it was great. Thank you to bartender Unsal and Aysun also thanks to all in bar and kitchen staff, restaurant staff. Animation was brilliant all of them especially Dida ,Omer and DJ, thanks. Youtuber Huseyin Dikilitas working at night thank you he was very nice . See you next New Year so we can celebrate again 😀.

The best hotel in Turkey

Currently staying at Villa Side Residence for 7 days 22nd March - 29th March, after reading reviews that the hotel operated a good Winter Service. Sadly that is not quite the case.

 I had some  holiday to use up from last year and after reading reviews that this hotel virtually ran a normal service and being only week before Summer Season starts, thought what could go wrong.

After having to deal with Holiday Gems a disastrous company, who despite several phone calls and emails, failed in getting luggage added to my flights that I had paid for and the fact  that I am due to fly back with less hand luggage than they booked me to fly out with is astonishing! 

I arrived at Stansted, not being able to check in online with Pegasus Airlines after the 3 different booking references provided by Holiday Gems, to be told they would have to speak to someone to get  a seat allocated for me. Not a start!

Great transfers with DT Transfers to the hotel with my driver offering to stop off for food and drink, not really required for a 40 mins transfer.

Arrived and checked in, with the bell boy taking my luggage to my room on the 2nd floor, to discover that I had been given a twin room despite requesting a double bed and having it in writing on my paperwork. I tipped him and asked him to ring reception to change rooms, which he did to be told the hotel was full and  to go to reception after breakfast. This was clearly a lie as I was allocated the room next door at 10am. So no time  for someone to vacate or house keeping clean by then.

Now to my gripes with the hotel, there is no food available around the pool and only one bar open, which is serviced by one member of staff, who is expected to serve the whole pool area and collect plastic glasses, along with providing waiter service, although 3 days in, I haven't had any sun bed service. So this leads to an empty bar and people waiting to be served. So you end up having to go to the beach bar for food and drink where there are an abundance of staff. (Tim you'll be pleased to hear the pizza oven is finished and nice but small pizzas available as well as pide)

Biggest gripe and guest relation were very flippent about it when mentioned, was  when is the maintenance work going on around the hotel going to finish, as they are clearly not ready for Summer Season next week. As for the last 3 days there has been a noisy chop saw, nail gun compressor and angle grinder being used under the water slides and on the bridge, along with a metal trellis table with scaffold boards in the pool replacing the ballastrauding and wooden edging on the pool bridge and surrounding areas. Plus tiling being done in the beach bar area. Really not something to you expect when trying to unwind and there's only so much a pair of Air pods  will drown out. 

Here is where tour operators and hotels need to be more honest and transparent with the public, as the only information, Holiday Gems and the hotel provided, were that one of the swimming pools wasn't available until the 16 th March. No mention of noise and renovations going on as I type! 
If I had known that the hotel was having renovations and that the swim up bar, Blue Bar were closed and that there was no food service available around the pool area, then I definitely would've booked another hotel, which there were plenty and cheaper available in the area.

As for entertainment, it's all very German orientated and something that the hotel seems to embrace, but suppose if that's the hotels demographic then I can see why. Unfortunately after 3 days, I can't really take much more DJ Otzi & The Hermes House Bound mega mix covers (Country Roads, Hey Baby) along with the wrong words to Show me the way Amarillo (Tony Cristie would laugh).

 Have to agree with my fellow Brit Tim Millea here, the Lobby Bar is total waste and akin to scene out of Stephen King's The Shining, a lonely desolate place with sofas and led lights on a PIR Timer, that leads to a smoking room/bar that wouldn't look out of place in a 70s working mans club.

Food in the buffet area albeit small and can imagine a nightmare peak season, is of good standard and plenty of choice. Red wine drinkable although often freezing cold. 

Rooms are a decent size and cleaned regularly, mini bar stocked daily and nice touches like beach bag, shaving and tooth brush kit along with toiletries provided. Balcony a decent size although enclosed, so doesn't get much sun looking over the pool.
All in all, an Ok hotel not sure I would revisit, as will probably pick a larger hotel later in the year, that caters to a wider demographic and hopefully no renovations going on.

Guest relations I hope you understand and rectify. 
 

Ok hotel but renovations a week before Summer Season!

We visited this hotel third time. Staff is great especially Fahri from animation team. It was too good to spent time with your hotel. I recommend everyone I loved rooms food and other services and the personel was too kind and We liked hotel organizations thank you very much

Good Hotel and Animation Super

Villa Side Residence (Jan 2024)
My mother and I stayed at the Villa Side Residence for two weeks from 19th January 2024. It was my 5th stay at this hotel but my 81st hotel stay in Antalya Province - I have much to compare it with!

Almost everything I wrote in my previous four Tripadvisor reviews of the Villa Side Residence still applies so to spare repeating myself, I will refer to those first, in chronological order.

January 2019: https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUserReviews-g297968-d6551009-r646881207-Villa_Side_Residence-Side_Manavgat_Turkish_Mediterranean_Coast.html

February 2020: https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUserReviews-g297968-d6551009-r752706870-Villa_Side_Residence-Side_Manavgat_Turkish_Mediterranean_Coast.html

November/December 2021: https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUserReviews-g297968-d6551009-r822524433-Villa_Side_Residence-Side_Manavgat_Turkish_Mediterranean_Coast.html

January 2023: https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowUserReviews-g297968-d6551009-r876717977-Villa_Side_Residence-Side_Manavgat_Turkish_Mediterranean_Coast.html

January 2024
Overall, the Villa Side Residence remains an excellent hotel for a winter stay on the Antalya coast. Almost all hotels and their reviews refer to their summer operation. Most hotels practically close down in the winter season and ‘kettle’ their guests into a reduced space and have far fewer amenities. Those reviews and hotel’s advertised amenities are simply irrelevant for a stay in the winter season (November-April).

So differences and observations from my previous reviews….

The only differenceI I noticed in the rooms is that the cups at the tea & coffee station are now ceramic rather than paper - an improvement that means I don’t have to bring my own. The bathrobes are a new bling gold-tipped design. The ‘XL’ size fitted my mother but was way too short and small for me. 

There have been big improvements at the all-important beach bar/restaurant. The indoor buffet area, pizza oven and rotisserie and the outdoor BBQ grill have all gone. Instead in the larger covered area opposite (alongside the beach), there is now a row of roller-shutters covering the full-length of the building. When raised they reveal a buffet/servery and kitchen behind from where lunch at the beach is now served. The daily selection is typically pasta, with a lady to add ingredients to it and fry it to order, chips, grilled whole fish, rice, two forms of stew, kebab meat, burgers and buns, hot dogs in rolls, salads, cheeses, sweets and cakes plus some others which are different every day. There is a vast range of sauces and spices to add too. 

Sadly, there is no longer a soup and bread station (as yet). Pizzas will have to await the completion of a new, very impressive pizza oven being built just beyond, next to a new gozleme house (where the surplus sun beds used to be stacked) (and currently only used for dart-playing). Whether the new pizza oven will be in use during the future winter seasons remains to be seen. Still, overall, it is a huge improvement for an already fantastic beach bar/restaurant open all year round, weather-permitting, and it is encouraging to see investment in this already exceptional part of the hotel. If they built a few rooms, or even cabins, at the beach bar, I would just live there, forever! 

I should just point out that the lunch is also served in the main hotel buffet restaurant as normal - the beach bar/restaurant lunch is a fantastic bonus! 

The main hotel buffet restaurant is not cold as on my last visit. There remains an excellent choice of food at the buffet but the quality is not quite as good as my first two visits and, in particular, the special nights of Friday and Monday are nothing like as special as they once were.  There has also been a further reduction in the use of linen napkins. During our two week stay we only had them on the table on Monday dinners (‘White Night’). On my first visit, there were linen napkins along with two sets of cutlery every lunch and dinner and a little vase of flowers on every table, every meal - part of why I returned to the hotel. The vases have gone, linen napkins replaced by tiny and useless paper napkins in a dispenser and only one set of cutlery - ever. Extra cutlery is available of course. Vases, flowers and linen napkins are not. These cost-reduction measures do reduce the quality of life and the appearance of the restaurant.

The ‘Lobby Bar’ was still cold and all its bar stools missing (along with the decorative bottles from the alcoves behind the bar). The lighting remained awful with all the beautiful decorative chandeliers and wall lights all switched off. For all intents and purposes the Lobby Bar is closed and serves just an area to walk through to get to the ’smoking bar’ beyond it. Waiters do serve anyone brave enough to sit in the cold, badly-lit Lobby Bar. 

To those who wish to avoid the noisy entertainment, the lobby bar with its comfortable sofa-sets is the obvious place to be. It is the most comfortable public space of the hotel except for the cold, dimness and its decommissioned bar! The hotel clearly actively discourages use of it. The smokers bar beyond is warm but gets full and very smokey. It is an absolute crime not to run the hotel’s very best public space to its optimum. 

Finally, on the mis-management of the Lobby Bar, I have mention the abandonment of its central space which used to be such a cosy and popular place to sit and talk and now appears to be permanently arranged as a dance floor, cleared of tables and comfortable seats but with huge P.A. speakers that are never used. There are also new, very bright, PIR-operated LED strip lights on the steps up to the central section which are so bright and stay on for such a few seconds that they are a terrible disturbance for anyone tolerating the already appalling conditions of the Lobby bar. I would like to see whoever made these decisions of the Lobby bar go to prison. Being sacked is not enough. The Lobby bar is currently an affront to humanity. 

The main ’Sinfoni Bar’, where the entertainment is held in the winter, remains in full operation and heated, open 24 hours and has a long list of branded drinks. Cocktails and ‘champagne’ are included at all locations. 

I clarified that the ’15 day rule’ that came in on my last visit, for an included bag of laundry (10 items), applies to a stay of 15 nights or more. Cruise lines always refer to 14 nights as 15 days, so this needed clarifying. We were there for 14 nights (15 days) and so did not qualify.

Many of the staff have changed with plenty of new faces but plenty of old ones too. The staff remain an amazing asset to the hotel and the service everywhere is sublime. There is never a need to visit the bar counter but, if you do, you take priority over the waiters - just the way it should be. If you sit in the same section at breakfast, coffees arrive without asking. 

The very capable Guest Relations Manager, Hanife, has been joined by an assistant with a desk next to Hanife’s (just off reception). I hope Hanife is not planning on retiring. 

Guest demographics remain broadly the same. The vast majority are German, just 4 Brits (us and 2 friends and only because we arranged to meet up) and a fair few Turkish guests ranging from young families to old men. There are a few other tiny minorities such as Dutch but the first language of staff speaking to guests is always German. This is common on the Antalya coast. All front line staff can speak English. Like last January, there was a large school party for a few days but then the last two weeks of January is a major Turkish school holiday so this was to be expected. Why the hotel does not attract more Brits when there are 10 times as many flying to Antalya as there were just a few years ago, I cannot imagine. 

I shall finish as I started, the Villa Side Residence remains an excellent winter hotel on the Antalya coast but just not quite as good as it used to be, like for like, January 2019 to January 2024. 

My greatest attraction is the fantastic beach bar/restaurant - where I could live.

My greatest detraction is the Lobby bar which was designed to be beautiful but is criminally degraded.

Tim

Great beach bar/restaurant, the rest not as good as it was (January 2024)

This hotel is amazing. Everything was perfect- delicious food, rooms service, pool and animators, epecially miss MiMi, our children love her. Evening live music and dance show were great too. We are looking forward to next holidays in this wonderful place.


Great hotel

Situated in a popular resort area just outside the coastal town of Side and near the sandy beach, this attractive resort hotel is perfect for a relaxing holiday of sea and sun. Rooms are generous and brightly lit with natural sunlight, all furnished with wireless internet, central air, soft slippers, and a balcony to better appreciate the fresh, seaside air. The hotel offers several bars and a la carte restaurants specializing in traditional and modern Turkish cuisine as well as a romantic Italian restaurant. Guests can enjoy a wide variety of daily activities from relaxing ping pong, bocce ball and shuffle board in the games arcade to adrenaline-pumping windsurfing, jet skiing and parasailing on the beach, and on hot summer nights entertainment is provided in the hotel's amphitheatre. Alternatively, guests can simply relax with a book by the refreshing outdoor pools or play on the water slides. A simply delightful place to take a relaxing holiday in the Turkish sunshine.

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Villa Side Residence