"This is my full review of Innvista hotel as we stayed there during the last week of May. This is my third visit to Antalya and I picked this hotel as we stayed previously in another nearby hotel which was outstanding and I thought that the service & quality might be the same.
Check in: It was swift and we were given our room keys and towel cards immediately and were in our room within a few minutes.
The room : We stayed in a family room which is a two bedrooms divided by a door. There is one shared bathroom only for both rooms. The bathroom is okay but there is no bath just a shower. The rooms are quite small and there is little space to move around. It also has a balcony overseeing the main entrance and pool which we haven’t used due to mosquitoes. You should leave the balcony doors closed at all times or your will end up with mosquitoes all over the room. It was very noisy on our first and second night as the room oversees the main entrance and so when staff arrive with deliveries, you can hear the trucks beeping loudly and staff laughing and shouting as each other at 2am?! I used ear plugs the next day, but I found a Russian family the following morning asking for a room change due to the same issue.
The main issue I had is them filling the shampoo dispenser, gel shower dispenser and hand wash dispenser with the SAME product. There is no conditioner or body lotion as you would usually get in 5 stars hotels. I even had them in 4 stars before! But having to wash your hair with what is essentially a handwash is insane! You only need to watch the cleaners refilling all dispensers from the same bottle.
Food: Breakfast is okay but is the same EVERY day. You have some Pide, plain cakes, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, sausages, pancakes, fried Turkish pancakes, omelette (The queue is insane for this so not worth it at times), borek and chips. There is a salad bar, bread corner, cheese, and deli and viennoiserie. Coffee, tea and juice is available
Lunch and dinner always had (cold) pizzas, flat bread, rice, mashed potatoes, meat stews (these were my favourites), fried fish, chicken drumsticks or Turkey steak (overcooked and rubbery every day), spaghetti or penne pasta with additional tomato sauce (not bolognaise), onion rings and chips. Sometimes they have the grill barbecue at dinner but if you don’t go out to check yourself you will miss out. The grilled Kofte was great and is worth trying. Salad bars, two kinds of soup and mezze is always available. They also have a variety of patisserie and Turkish sweets available in the dessert corners opposite the drinks.
It is worth noting that apart from the soups, NOTHING is labelled. I served my self one day what looked like lamb and green peppers, but it turned out to be liver!
Staff working in the restaurant are fantastic and are constantly cleaning and emptying the tables. However, there is a huge language barrier and if you ask for something you might end up getting something else or just shrugged shoulders as they don’t understand.
Pool: My children loved the slides and found both pools to be highly entertaining. The slides close at 12 pm, and then open at 2pm and close at 5pm. There are plenty loungers around but if you’re not a smoker or try to protect your respiratory system you will be having a hard time in there. They should implement a smoke free rule at least in some parts of the hotel, especially near the kids slides. But it seems that the culture of the place doesn’t have an issue with smoking a cigarette after another near children or people with asthma or other health issues. It’s no surprise that lung cancer is the most diagnosed cancer and the leading cause of cancer mortality in Turkey.
Location: The hotel is half an hour away by taxi from the airport. It’s 10 minutes walking from the Land of legends and around 20 minutes from the nearest town Kadriye where you can find mini markets where the locals live. We visited the Kadriye market on Tuesday and got some delicious fruits. However, we didn’t bother with all the overpriced fake merchandise on there. If you want to visit Antalya city or Kaleici, it’s almost an hour by bus from Kadriye station. Taxis will charge you a ridiculous amount to go there as they charged us 10 euros from Kadriye to the hotel. We stayed in some luxury hotels in Dubai recently and we found their taxis much better and at least 5 times cheaper than Antalya.
Safety: You need to be careful when using the lifts. On day three of our stay, we were all in the lift going to bed. When we got to floor 3 the doors would slightly open and then close again. We pressed the opening door button many times, but it didn’t work. We pressed other floor levels, but it didn’t work either. The doors kept opening for a 1cm and then closing again. We pressed the bell, but it doesn’t ring and no one answers. After a minute or so, the door opened because someone pressed the button from outside. I reported this incident to reception the following morning and was told that they will get it checked. On day five, my children had a very unfortunate incident where they were trapped inside and the door wouldn’t open. They pressed the bell many times and were shouting for help but to no avail. The door decided to open itself after a couple of minutes, but it was a traumatising experience. I consider this to be a major health and safety hazard as I walked in again and tried the emergency bell and it wasn’t working. I walked to reception and spoke to a nice receptionist called Hussein who was apologetic about it and he said that the manager should be aware of it. We both stood waiting for the manager to come as he waved at him many times and walked to tell him briefly about the issue, however he cowardly went inside and didn’t want to speak to us. Hussein apologised and asked me to explain what happened to the guest relations officer which I did. The girl was called Meva and she was very professional and nice but she couldn’t answer any of my questions. Is there a system in place connecting the emergency bell to a line? No clue. When was the last time these lifts were maintained or safety checked? No clue. What risk assessments are being carried to ensure the guests’ safety when using the lift? No clue. These are all questions that the manager should be able to answer but he preferred to hide instead.
Overall, I would rate my stay in Innvista as 3/5. I don’t believe it’s a five stars hotel and I would say it’s a 3 to 4 stars maximum. I regret not paying a little extra and staying at the neighbouring hotel where we stayed last year (Aydinbey Queen’s Palace) which was very good."
