Limak Lara De Luxe Hotel and Resort

This is our fifth year in a row coming to Turkey and staying in the Lara resort area, so we know the area well and have stayed in a number of hotels here. Unfortunately, Limak Lara Deluxe Hotel & Resort has been the most disappointing hotel we’ve stayed at in Lara.

It’s not a terrible hotel – there are genuinely some very good things about it – but for the amount of money we paid and the fact it’s sold as a luxury 5-star resort, we expected considerably better.

The good

The pools are lovely, and we’ve found it surprisingly easy to get a good sun lounger without having to get up ridiculously early.

The beach is very clean and well maintained, and the hotel is in a great location for walking out to the local shops.

Getting a drink around the hotel is generally very easy and the snack bars serve some really tasty food.

The main buffet restaurant has a huge selection of food. It’s plentiful, varied and there should be something for everyone.

Our room is a good size and housekeeping has been very good. It’s been cleaned every day and we’ve had no issues at all with the cleanliness.

Unfortunately, the negatives have really let the hotel down

Our experience in the Italian à la carte restaurant was absolutely awful.

We were seated and then waited around 30 minutes just to get a drink. We asked staff twice and were basically ignored, eventually reaching the point where I left the restaurant and went to one of the hotel bars to get our drinks myself.

It then took ages for our food order to be taken. Meanwhile, we watched people who had been seated after us have their orders taken and their food served before ours.

When our meals eventually came, they arrived at completely different times. This wasn’t a couple of minutes – one person’s meal arrived more than 20 minutes after the others, by which point we’d all finished eating.

The food wasn’t particularly good either and the portions were tiny. The carbonara was basically cream and made my daughter feel sick.

When I told our waiter that the service wasn’t acceptable, his response was to give me a thumbs-up. No apology, no attempt to sort the situation out – just a thumbs-up. His attitude was incredibly rude and dismissive.

We were so fed up that we left before dessert.

We complained to Guest Services afterwards and their solution was to offer us 50% off the bill. Considering how bad the experience had been and that we didn’t even stay to finish the meal, we thought that was pretty poor too.

The main restaurant can be chaos

The buffet itself has a good selection of food, but the restaurant simply seems unable to cope at peak times. My wife was also served raw chicken.

Breakfast between approximately 9:00–10:30 and dinner between 19:15–21:00 can be absolutely rammed.

We’ve stood around for 20 minutes trying to find somewhere to sit, with very little assistance from staff, and on one occasion we couldn’t get seated at all.

You quickly learn that you have to tailor your day around the hotel. Go for breakfast and dinner outside the busiest periods and it’s much easier, but for a hotel at this price point I don’t think guests should have to organise their holiday around when they might be able to get a table.

Service is very inconsistent

Communication can be difficult as surprisingly few staff we’ve encountered speak much English.

More concerningly, we have also noticed a difference between the service given to local Turkish holidaymakers and foreign tourists.

I obviously can’t say why this is, and I’m only commenting on what we personally experienced, but on several occasions local guests appeared to receive noticeably quicker and more attentive service than we did. It happened enough times that we were left feeling that we were being treated differently.

This is particularly disappointing because this is our fifth consecutive year holidaying in Lara and we’ve never experienced that feeling at any of the other hotels we’ve stayed in. We’ve always found the hospitality in Turkey fantastic.

Other frustrations

Our room fridge doesn’t work. We reported it to reception and, five days later, it still doesn’t work. At a 5-star hotel, something that basic shouldn’t take five days to resolve.

Getting genuinely cold bottled water can also be surprisingly difficult, which seems ridiculous in the Turkish summer heat.

We’ve also noticed an occasional sewage-type smell around the pool areas, which isn’t particularly pleasant.

There’s a lack of convenient poolside snack options compared with other resorts we’ve stayed at.

The evening entertainment is very hit and miss. Some nights are better than others, but the magician was certainly memorable – he couldn’t even fool our 7-year-old! 😂

Overall – 2.5/5

There are definitely positives at Limak Lara Deluxe. The pools are great, the beach is lovely, our room is spacious and kept very clean, drinks are easy to get, the snack-bar food is tasty and there’s a huge amount of choice in the main buffet.

But unfortunately the service, organisation and attention to detail just aren’t at the level we’d expect from a hotel marketed as a luxury 5-star resort.

We’ve stayed in 4-star hotels that have felt considerably more luxurious and better organised than this.

After five consecutive years holidaying in Lara, we have plenty to compare it against, and unfortunately this has been our most disappointing hotel experience in the area.

For the amount of money we paid, we simply don’t think it’s worth it.

2.5/5. We wouldn’t recommend it and, unlike the other hotels we’ve stayed at in Lara, we wouldn’t return.

Just spent ten days here and was worried about coming after reading some of the reviews, when we arrived late at night we were put into a ground floor room after booking sea view, this problem was rectified straight away and we were moved to the correct room. The pools are really good there’s so much pool space and quieter areas or more lively. The kids slides are good and there’s shallow pools for them, the big inflatable assault course they put into the water is fun. We rented cabanas and they were good, fruit plates cornettos and constant drinks brought to you. Some staff friendly some were quite rude as if they didn’t want to be there. Some areas of the hotel require refurbishment and maintenance with maybe upgrades to the decor but it doesn’t really affect the stay. Selection of drinks were good I liked that they had bottles and cans of coke instead of just Pepsi like a lot of the other hotels, can’t say anything about alcoholic drinks as we don’t drink. As a previous review said the ice cream was a very chewy unusual texture, would have preferred ice creams like cornettos or ice lollies instead. The overall cleanliness of the hotel could have been better some times, the outside toilet floors were always wet from people going from the pool into the toilets. The kids fest was a nice touch with all different bouncy castles, slides and games etc the kids enjoyed this. Overall we had a good stay here and don’t let the reviews put you off.