All-inclusive in Oludeniz

SEPTEMBER 2022

We’re fiercely independent travellers. Book a flight somewhere. Seek out some independent, boutique hotels. And sort the rest out when we get there. We’ll invariably visit a few different locations, in order to see as much as reasonably possible and absorb as much local culture as we can.

Of course there are exceptions – times when an international chain hotel where everything works is a welcome respite from the chaos outside; see Delhi – A Comedy of Errors.

So, in my mid-fifties, I had never been on a package holiday. The very idea fills my mind with dread. Being part of the hoi polloi. Being branded as the same as everyone else. Ferried from one location to another with a group of lager-fuelled, sun-burnt British holiday-makers. (Pots and kettles perhaps but you’ve got to at least think you have your own standards.)

But when some friends, Kevin and Aom, suggested an all-inclusive week-long trip to a resort in southern Turkey, we thought about it for a few seconds, and, having barely been overseas in the past three pandemic-filled years, booked up immediately. Baste me in sunscreen and bake for eight hours a day.

The advantages are immediate mind you. Booking a holiday usually involves hours, if not days, researching multiple flight options before settling on an itinerary which delivers with the most convenient airport, preferred airlines, sensible departure and arrival times, minimises wait times and maximises holiday time. Then add internal flights to the mix and you’ve a recipe for multiple configurations, hours wasted and several arguments.

And that’s before you even get to the hotel options. That can be even more fraught, trying to ensure that we get the best possible deal, location, room with a view, preferably independent, preferably boutique/quirky, ideally with breakfast and free cancellation thrown in.

And then having to redo it because something, somewhere was not quite right. See Tanzania, where we arranged to go on safari on a day when we were still half-way up a mountain. Or Spain, where the original itinerary left us with a seven-hour drive immediately prior to a flight, and a high risk of missing the plane.

Given that Kevin had done all the research and decided on dates and a location, this online booking took less than five minutes. It was as easy as buying some needless junk from Amazon. That came later.

And so we boarded the Tui-operated flight from Gatwick. And while I had visions of the entire flight then being herded onto the same bus by flag-wielding, baseball cap-wearing holiday reps, and all headed for the same resort for a bun-fight check-in process, it wasn’t like that at all. Everyone seemed to scatter in different directions. There were only a dozen or so people on our allocated bus. And by the time we’d dropped people off at various other hotels and reached our own resort, we may well have been the only people left. And we even managed to find a bar still open at 3am in which to get a celebratory beer before bed-time. All my snobbish perceptions of package holidays and package tourists had so far proven unfounded.

The following morning then revealed the resort itself. And bugger me, it is rather damned impressive. Described as an “upscale, all-inclusive, mega-resort”, Liberty Hotels Lykia, about a 10-minute drive from the main strip in Oludeniz, has a staggering 645 rooms. The rooms are housed in three-story villas which makes it as reasonably unobtrusive as a 645-room resort can be, i.e. it’s not high-rise.

It has an extensive private beach and a bewildering array of swimming pools, some adults-only and others with waterslides; plus seven restaurants and nearly as many bars; a fitness centre, Turkish bath and spa, fitness classes, exorbitantly-priced retail outlets, and just about all the sporting activities you could ask for.

At times it felt like a holiday camp. Pilates in the fitness area at 8am, water-polo in the main pool at 10am, yoga at 11am. The only thing missing was the knobbly-knees competition. Which is a shame, I reckon I’d’ve been in with a shout for that one.

But you really can’t fault the range or the quality of the facilities. Or the warmth and helpfulness of the staff. The rooms may be a little tired, but with everything else on offer, you spend very little time in them. The people on TripAdvisor who find cause to complain about this place must either have some seriously high standards, or be mildly deranged. (And if you read the views, it is clearly the latter.)

And there are self-serve beer taps all over the place. What is there not to like about that? Why they dispense the Danish lager Tuborg rather than the local Efes was beyond me however. The Tuborg rep who secured that deal is probably still luxuriating on his yacht somewhere along this gorgeous coastline.

It then became a matter of whether to spend the day on the beach or by the pool.

The resort’s private beach is lovely. A narrow strip of sand and pebbles, lined with sun-loungers, complete with a boardwalk, and a couple of floating pontoons just offshore. The sea is warm and the swimming lovely – it felt like an age since I’d last swam anywhere.

The main pool is the epicentre of the resort, home to water-based fitness classes, water polo matches and various other activities. It also echoes to a constant soundtrack of god-awful Euro-disco. After one afternoon there, we were happy to find an alternative. And whilst there is a wonderfully peaceful adults-only pool, the pool beside the ‘Children’s Paradise Waterpark’ actually became our favourite, not least because we can’t take Kev and Aom’s 18-month old Kaylene to the adults-only pool. Being at a slight remove from the main resort, it was quieter, good for doing laps, and actually wasn’t overrun by screaming kids. And no muzak.

I daresay many people can, and do, but we couldn’t spend an entire holiday without actually leaving the resort. So we hired a car and ventured off for a wander.

Fethiye is a port city some half an hour’s drive from Oludeniz. And Fethiye has a market. And we like markets. This one appears to be split broadly into two sections – foodstuffs and fakes.

The food stalls are colourful, aromatic and enticing – they certainly aren’t short of produce in Turkey. There are tables and tables of fruits and vegetables of different varieties, including the largest water melons imaginable, selections of pickled and smoked olives, nuts, homemade cheeses, sweets, a huge variety of spices, rices, coloured beans, lentils and other cereals. And while the tourists love the spectacle, you suspect the fruit and veg sellers make more money from the locals.

Then there is the manufactured goods market. I daresay there are a few stalls selling household goods to the locals, but most of it is just fakes upon fakes upon fakes. You name it, they’ll fake it. And let’s face it, the novelty of buying low quality clothing with a designer logo which doesn’t survive a single wash wore off long ago, soon after your first trip to almost anywhere in Asia. That said, it must still work for some folk because these guys are still churning out piles and piles of Gucci handbags, three for twenty quid.

Kayaköy is an abandoned village near Fethiye. Originally, and peacefully, occupied by Greeks, it was forcefully abandoned at the end of the Greco-Turkish War when a ‘population exchange’ meant that the Christian Greeks were sent back to Greece, and Turkish Muslims sent in the opposite direction. The local Turks decided they didn’t want to live in the remote village on the hill, and that was that for Kayakoy. In 1957 a large earthquake also took its toll on the abandoned town, causing major damage to the buildings. Nowadays the houses schools, chapels and churches, stand derelict, providing a fascinating hours investigation for the curious tourist.

A few miles south of Oludeniz, along a mountain road of twisting switchbacks, is the fjord-like Butterfly Valley. The views from the cliff-tops are spectacular; the sheer, vertical cliffs dropping dramatically into the clear turquoise waters; the sliver of golden sand accessible only by boat; and the verdant valley providing sanctuary to its eponymous butterflies. (Mind you, the internet appears divided as to whether those eponymous butterflies are actually still there or whether the albeit limited number of tourists have driven them out.)

A final pit-stop at a café overlooking yet another spectacular coastal view at nearby Kabak completed our day-long sojourn into the surrounding area. Then it was back to the resort for more of, well, everything.

Independent travelling requires multiple decisions to be made throughout any day. What to do today? Where to eat lunch? Where to eat dinner? Package tours negate all that.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner are all served buffet-style in the main dining area. And the breadth of food is incredible. Alongside the Turkish kebabs, kofte, pide and mezze, is just about everything else you can think of…curries, pastas, stews, fresh fish, cold cuts, salads, a multitude of veg, chips, you name it, they’ve got it. You could eat every day for a week and never have the same thing twice. The downside of this multicultural smorgasbord is a lack of understanding as to what Turkish cuisine actually is.

And the conspicuous consumption becomes a little discomfiting. Not just in the plates piled high with quantities of food people clearly do not need to eat. Nor the amount of food left unwanted on people’s plates. It’s just the sheer quantity of food on offer. The daily delivery of ingredients must be of an industrial scale. There are people all around the world, even in so-called developed countries like the UK, struggling to put food on their plates and feed their kids. Yet here, and in countless other resorts up and down the Turkish coast, all across the Med, all across the world, the consumption is just staggering. And the participants in this excess appear wilfully oblivious to their compliance.

I know that just by being here we are part of the problem, although we were conscious not to overload our plates just for the sake of it, or to leave any uneaten food on our plates. But this all seemed like consumption for consumption’s sake. Hang on, have I just discovered a moral in my otherwise callous soul?

The jewel in Oludeniz’s crown is the Blue Lagoon, a shallow bay separated from the main beach and the sea by a sand bar and narrow channel. Plans to visit that, and a few other notable spots around the bay, were however thwarted when the wind kicked up a bit, and no boat trips were available. So we missed the Blue Lagoon. And we missed Saklikent National Park, as we quite frankly couldn’t be arsed with such a lengthy day-trip. Had the all-inclusive experience made us that indolent?

Very possibly. Because the truth is that the resort is so comprehensive in its offer, there really is no need venture further afield. And free of decision-making it genuinely can be a deliciously relaxing experience. The downside is cultural anonymity. It could be anywhere. Had we not had the one day out it would have felt that we had never visited Turkey at all.

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be black and white, one or the other. A package tour will work for some holidays, full cultural immersion for others. Like most things, there is room in our lives for a bit of everything.