Lara Beach Hotel, Antalya

...holiday to the 5* Hotel Lara Beach in Turkey. What a fabulous place. This is by far the best hotel I have stayed at in Turkey.

***The Resort***
The hotel is located in the resort of Lara Beach in Antalya. This is a relatively new resort which is noticeable by the lack of shops and facilities unless you go to the centre. The majority of hotels in the area are 5* but a large number of holiday apartments are in the process of being ...
...yet fully occupied. The Lara Beach Resort is only 20 minutes from Antalya airport/30 minutes from Antalya shopping centre.

***The Hotel***
On arrival at the hotel the journey up the long driveway is uninspiring as the area around the hotel has yet to be developed. The hotel itself is deceptive in its construction. The exterior is made relelatively completely of glass and steel frame construction, and from the front it looks ... more

I have just returned from a two week holiday to the 5* Hotel Lara Beach in Turkey. What a fabulous place. This is by far the best hotel I have stayed at in Turkey.

***The Resort***
The hotel is located in the resort of Lara Beach in Antalya. This is a relatively new resort which is noticeable by the lack of shops and facilities unless you go to the centre. The majority of hotels in the area are 5* but a large number of holiday apartments are in the process of being built. There does not appear to be many places to go out and eat but as the apartments are developed I am sure the facilities to go with them will arrive. There is a large shopping centre which has just been built but at the time of writing is not yet fully occupied. The Lara Beach Resort is only 20 minutes from Antalya airport/30 minutes from Antalya shopping centre.

***The Hotel***
On arrival at the hotel the journey up the long driveway is uninspiring as the area around the hotel has yet to be developed. The hotel itself is deceptive in its construction. The exterior is made relelatively completely of glass and steel frame construction, and from the front it looks very tall and thin and you cannot image how they fit in all the facilities you know to be available.

The interior of the hotel is fabulous, a mixture of marble and wooden flooring together with a variety of wall coverings ranging from wallpaper to marble.

The rooms were really nice with wooden flooring, mini bar (stocked at the start of your stay with beer and soft drinks then replenished with water daily), digital safe, satellite TV in a variety of languages, a terrace and full bathroom.

***Accommodation***

The hotel has 311 rooms which can accomodate up to 700 beds - crikey!

***Food and Beverage***

The hotel operates on a total All Inclusive basis (10am-midnight), all local beverages and soft drinks were free, imported drinks had to be paid for . Purchases were on a cashless system, anything you wanted was charged to your room and you paid on check out.

The hotel has 6 bars (lobby bar, pool bar, tv bar, vitamin bar (not open during our stay) disco bar and quiet bar).

There are 4 restaurants (1 buffet restaurant and 3 a la carte).
In the grounds of the hotel there is a Yoruk tent (see below for details)

Buffet restaurant: this is where you would eat most of your meals. A self service restaurant serving a variety of foods (different every day) ranging from fried eggs/omlettes/sausages etc (breakfast) to stews, salad, dessert etc (evening meal). Every evening a bbq was set up outside where a variety of meats and fish were prepared - yummy!

Turkish restaurant: this is one of the a la carte restaurants and you could eat here for free once during your stay. It was a 5 course set menu and served the expected humour/meze, kebab etc.

Italian restaurant: another a la carte restaurant where you could eat for free once during your stay. Another 5 course set menu including tomato soup, rizzotto and pasta dishes.

Fish restaurant: this was not open during our stay.

Yoruk tent: open throughout the day serving pizza, a pancake type dish, and kebabs/baked potatoes or grilled fish sandwiches. Great for lunch or afternoon snacks.

***Health & Beauty***

There is a full gym, a spa (including sauna, turkish bath, and spa treatments), and hairdresser.

There were 5 pools (quiet pool, main pool, adult water slide pool, childrens pool, indoor pool).

***Shops***

There is a newsagent/supermarket where you can buy all your pool/beach gear along with sweets, snacks, cigarettes etc, a clothes shop, a leather good shop and a jewellers.

***Activities***

The hotel has its own entertainment team who happily spend their days organising entertainment for the guests. Activies included:

Archery, aerobics, aqua aerobics, pool games, table tennis, snooker, football, water polo, beach volleyball.

There is an adults aqua park with 3 water slides - this is part of the all inclusive package.

At night (around 10 o'clock) there was a large screen cinema on the hotel pier showing fairly recent blockbuster films in a variety of languages.

For children: there is a separate pool for smaller children with mini water slides and water fountains. They have their own kids club and entertainment team and at night a mini disco.

***Entertainment***

The entertainment was mainly geared at the Turks, Russians and Germans but included dance shows, comedy shows and quiz/bingo nights.

***Photographer***

As with most hotels these days they have their own photographer who is rarely away taking photos of everyone doing activities or in the pool. The photos were good quality and very reasonably priced. They are taken without obligation to buy.

***Our experience***

We booked the holiday through Portland Direct as a last minute bargain and we are so glad that we did.

By far the biggest highlight of the holiday was the main swimming pool - I have never seen a pool as big. It had a large bridge spanning the pool which sectioned the pool off into smaller interconnected areas so it never felt like there were loads of people in the pool with you. The pool was also a sensible 1.4m deep all the way round so even those who are not strong swimmers could easily stand up and didn't have to worry about ending up in the deep end.

The food was fabulous but could get a bit repetitive in the buffet restaurant.

The staff were all very friendly and helpful but didn't speak much English although we always managed to get ourselves understood. One great thing was they were not stingy with the drinks - at 11:45pm you could go to the bar and order enough drinks to keep you going until the early hours of the morning (the free bar stops at midnight!). At other hotels I have been to they will only let you get one drink at a time.

The open air disco bar was one of the best I have been to. They played lots of cheesy Turkish disco music (none of the Ibiza type club music) and we danced most nights away until 3am. The bar staff there made a bizarre array of cocktails (one of which was a very lethal pink one that looked like a glass of pepto bismol). The entertainment team were in there most nights and would happily teach you turkish dances if you wanted to learn.

***Would I recommend the hotel***

Yes definitely - I loved this hotel and will definitely go back again. 

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