A beautiful retreat from the world. They’ve created a tiny 35 room village nestled in a pine grove by the sea.
You will relax.
starstarstarstarstar James Layfield
The property itself is stunning, especially the rooms with ocean view. They’re all suites with private pools which is great. BUT definitely the service level is totally incomparable to organizations like the Four Seasons or Ritz. Amanruya did not come close to meeting expectations for me. Here’s why...
The food is overall good, but for sure lacking traditional or Turkish options. The gastronomy option isn’t worth it if we had to pay but we had it included in the promotion. Definitely the chef should consider to add local Turkish options though, it’s quite a shame to not have any.
The service was the weakest area at Aman. Some staff members were very kind, warm and hospitable such as Turgay and Sila with good English. Much of the staff didn’t speak English so 90% of the time things were very much lost in translation.
In addition, Aman needs to rethink a lot of how they handle hospitality. Honestly they totally miss the mark.
The room rate itself already is higher than most other luxury hotels in the world, so there’s an expectation that during the stay, it wouldn’t feel like the guest is being nickel and dimed. For ex, to bring the complimentary breakfast to the room it’s an extra 35 eur / $45 usd. I’ve never stayed at a luxury hotel that’s charging extra to just bring food to the room outside of the cost of the food itself. Over 7 days this amounted to $300 of extra fees to just bring food to the room.
In addition, the hotel is very far from the city so it’s required to take a shuttle. However the shuttle costs 100 eur round trip to just go to the city for a walk which once again should be complimentary.
My advice is that you remove everything that are these extra small annoying charges and if you really want, just add it to the total room price and make it more expensive rather than making it feel very transactional with upsells constantly. If you can afford the hotel you don’t care much about the price but today’s guests don’t want to constantly feel like the hotel is making the experience transactional on how to extract more money from the guest. Just charge 100 euro more then per night. I still would have booked it, and the property still makes more $. Win win.
The tour to Ephesus was good because Ephesus itself was absolutely incredible. However if I had to do it again, I’d just go by ourselves via transportation or something else. The tour guide was nice but not good. I actually couldn’t understand a lot of his English unfortunately so I didn’t feel like it added a lot of value. Definitely if you do the tour you can leave a bit later and it isn’t required to have such a long day. I think they generally save and allocate time to go to some traditional art or pottery shops on the way back if you want which some guests may like but I view as more a tourist trap.
Transportation, our driver to pick us up from the airport on the initial day was actually late and not there when we arrived. So that wasn’t a great first impression to arrive at the airport in the evening at 11 pm after traveling all day and for the transportation from the luxury hotel which normally costs like 130 euro or something for a 35 min drive to be not existent. He also drove like a maniac and had all these dirty old bottles from the last passengers and trash in his car. The complimentary water bottles were drank already.
I recommend Aman to rethink their hospitality model and check out the book “Heart of Hospitality” by Micah Solomon. I could tell the team tried hard but overall many things felt rough along the edges.
For example even when we did laundry they washed and dried a brand new $300 merino wool sweater, obviously completely ruining it. Don’t give them any valuable clothing to wash or it will be mishandled!
It appears to me that Aman differentiates on privacy and architecture versus other luxury resorts such as the Four Seasons differentiating on incredible service plus good architecture.
There’s a big opportunity here though which I think the young luxury generation will appreciate.
starstar Sheldon Zhai
Ultimate luxury experience in most green part of Bodrum peninsula. This peaceful resort offers a total privacy and relaxing time for the guests. Not affordable for everyone but worth to try if you can...
starstarstarstarstar Thomas Bise
You ask for it and it happens.
Perfect place for a private and quite special, pampered time.
starstarstarstarstar HAKKI EREN
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