"We recently spent 10 nights at the Papillon Ayscha as a family of four, with our son and daughter, and overall came away feeling that this is a very good family hotel that represents genuinely excellent value for money.
There are a few things worth knowing before you go – particularly for British families – but if you arrive understanding what the hotel is, who its main clientele are and what it does particularly well, there’s an awful lot to like.
Hotel & Grounds
The main hotel and its grounds are lovely. The central atrium in particular is pretty spectacular considering the price point, and a number of the communal areas – including the bars, toilets, gym, spa and sauna – are finished and maintained to a very high standard.
It feels like a quality resort when you arrive and, generally speaking, continues to feel that way throughout your stay.
There are also separate villa-style accommodation options on the approach to the main hotel, only a short walk from reception, with their own pool and sun loungers. We spoke to an English family staying there who said the villa area was incredibly peaceful.
The potential downside is that you’re slightly removed from the main hub of the hotel. They felt this sometimes meant staying put around their own pool and consequently missing some of the activities happening around the main resort. So there’s probably a trade-off between peace and quiet versus being right amongst everything.
Our Room
We had a suite overlooking the courtyard leading up from the main pool area. It was clean, modern and fitted to a good standard.
As a family of four, we had the existing double and single beds plus an additional mobile spring bed. It worked perfectly adequately for us, although things could get a little congested when all four of us were showering, changing and getting ready for the evening.
You soon develop your own holiday rhythm and, with a little organisation, it really wasn’t a problem.
If having separate living and sleeping areas – or simply a bit more privacy – is important to you, I would consider upgrading. I believe the next room category provides a separate double bedroom and lounge/sleeping area.
For our 10-night stay, however, I think the upgrade would have cost us around another £1,000. We simply decided we’d rather spend that money elsewhere during our annual family holiday.
Rooms were cleaned daily and cleaned well, with plenty of fresh towels. We were even treated to a towel swan and snake during our first few days!
The minibar was also replenished daily and remained very well stocked throughout.
Pools, Sun Loungers & Kids’ Facilities
Sun lounger availability was never really an issue for us.
There is plenty of space around the perimeter of the main pools and, once we’d established our preferred “holiday spot”, getting somewhere around the same area each day was rarely difficult.
A nice touch is the bar staff coming around the pool a couple of times each day with themed drinks trolleys, including plenty of non-alcoholic options.
For younger children, the kids’ facilities looked genuinely fantastic.
Our children didn’t really use the kids’ club itself, but we regularly walked through the area. There is a large outdoor play area, indoor soft play and seemingly always something happening – face painting, T-shirt painting, kids’ karaoke and everything in between.
I’d say it’s primarily geared towards children up to around 12.
The hotel also heavily promotes its sporting activities for children, including swimming, tennis and football.
One thing worth knowing: the organised children’s football only went up to age 12 during our stay. We hadn’t picked that up from anything we’d read beforehand, and with a football-mad teenage son, that was a little disappointing.
That said, once the kids – and inevitably their dads – start making friends, there’s a grassed area near the beach with football goals where plenty of long-form kickabouts can take place anyway!
Food
The main restaurant is very good and there is an enormous amount of choice.
The air-conditioned indoor section seemed to contain more of the pre-prepared dishes in warmers, while outside there is a “Chef’s Table” area that changes daily, where various meat and fish options and accompaniments such as noodles and rice are cooked fresh in front of you.
We’ve stayed at all-inclusive hotels previously that operate themed evenings on a rotation. Papillon Ayscha takes a slightly different approach: it essentially offers everything, every day.
Someone we spoke to summed it up perfectly: if you can’t find something you like, that’s probably more down to you than them.
I’d tend to agree.
After 10–14 days at any all-inclusive resort, food can inevitably begin to feel repetitive. But I think some of that is actually down to us being creatures of habit and continually going back to the things we already know we like!
The options are absolutely there to broaden your horizons if you’re feeling more adventurous.
Drinks & Bars
The main bars are very well stocked and you can pretty much get whatever you want.
Smirnoff, for example, appeared to be the standard vodka, but ask for Absolut and they’ll happily reach into the bottom cupboard and pour it – no questions asked. Another guest told us exactly the same applied to his preferred whisky.
The Martini Bar became one of our favourite evening spaces.
It’s beautifully styled and has a much more relaxed atmosphere. From around 9:30pm each evening there was usually a mixture of Turkish and Spanish-style classical guitarists and vocalists performing.
Quite a few groups of families seemed to naturally migrate there after the main evening show – playing UNO or other card games, the kids chilling on their phones, or everyone simply sitting together enjoying the music.
It was a really pleasant way to finish the evening.
Evening Entertainment
The quality of the main evening entertainment is extremely high.
However, I’d add an important distinction between quality and variety.
The programme appears understandably geared towards the hotel’s core clientele, so prepare yourself for plenty of acrobatic dance, genuinely impressive feats of physical strength, ballet and modern dance.
All of it is performed to a very high standard.
But after several evenings, I somehow found myself becoming an entirely unqualified “expert” in critiquing international dance troupes!
It can become a little samey.
One particular show earlier in our stay featured acrobats performing on a huge dual spinning pivot wheel before several motorcyclists finished the performance whizzing around inside a giant steel ball. That was genuinely enthralling.
So the entertainment is far from poor. Quite the opposite. I just think that with one or two completely different types of acts interspersed throughout the weekly rotation, it could go from very good to genuinely great.
The secondary family events – Carnival Night, Boca Night, White Party and similar – were also extremely impressive in terms of staging, atmosphere and effort.
Beach Club
There’s also an evening beach club.
If you’re over 40 like me, prepare yourself to develop an unexpected appreciation for bass-heavy house music for a week or two!
I suspect it’s understandably aimed more towards the teenagers and younger adults at the resort, although there weren’t huge numbers of young adults travelling without children during our stay.
One evening there was also a cabaret after the DJ covering more recognisable pop songs.
The best description I can give is perhaps Phoenix Nights meets Olaf in terms of presentation and quality.
But ABBA is ABBA – and everyone’s dancing to ABBA on holiday, right?
Sports & Activities
There’s plenty happening during the day, particularly if you’re competitive.
The main sporting competitions include rifle shooting, table tennis, darts, water polo and volleyball.
And make no mistake: the clientele take their sporting competitions VERY seriously.
Even when the entertainment reps attempted to inject a little traditional holiday shenanigans into proceedings, this was occasionally met with a broad consensus that there was serious business at hand.
There is honour at stake. There are prizes to be won.
Each evening, the day’s sporting winners are invited onto the main stage, ceremoniously declared “CHAMPIONS!”, before being accompanied by a blast of a Queen classic.
It became one of those wonderfully amusing little parts of the holiday.
Spa & Photography
The representatives promoting massages and family photography are consistent rather than particularly pushy.
And by “consistent”, I mean you’ll probably see them once or twice every day!
Some are clearly more enthusiastic salespeople than others, but ultimately it’s effectively cold calling and it’s their job, so we never really held it against them.
I didn’t get enough context to comment fairly on the photography pricing, but having compared the massage prices with our holiday rep, they did appear expensive.
That said, we spoke to another guest who had extensive experience of deep-tissue massages around the world and described his treatment at the hotel as “brutal” – very much as a compliment!
So if that’s exactly what your back needs, it sounds like they can certainly deliver.
Clientele & Atmosphere – Particularly for British Families
This is probably worth mentioning because it does affect the overall feel of the hotel.
During our stay, the clientele was predominantly Eastern European, alongside guests from the Middle East, France and elsewhere.
For our first few days it genuinely felt as though we might be the only British family there! As the normal guest “rotation” occurred, however, noticeably more British families arrived.
As Brits, I’d probably accept that we’re sometimes too polite – and we absolutely love a queue.
At one point we joked that we’d managed to thank our waiter five separate times for bringing us four glasses of water, which even by British standards is probably excessive.
But it’s nice to be nice, manners cost nothing and, in a hotel accommodating this many people, I’ve always found it remarkable how effective a queue is at getting everyone what they want without complete chaos ensuing!
Different nationalities and cultures inevitably do things differently.
The hotel’s core clientele have their ways and you’ve got yours. You’re not going to change them and they’re unlikely to change you.
So don’t let it ruin your holiday and it won’t.
But equally, don’t necessarily expect a “thank you” for holding a door, or assume that because you or your child have patiently waited your turn, everybody else will automatically agree that you’re next!
Take it for what it is, smile and get on with enjoying your holiday.
Staff & Service
There are pockets of the hotel’s front-of-house team who are genuinely exceptional.
These are the people who really understand hospitality – they take an interest in you and your family, remember you during your stay and, if you give them a smile and some pleasantries, reciprocate it in abundance with genuine warmth.
Those staff – along with our room cleaners, who can so easily go unnoticed – were the people we chose to tip at the end of our stay. Nothing substantial, just a few gestures of appreciation that were never expected but were clearly appreciated.
Unfortunately, it did sometimes feel as though the enthusiasm had been knocked out of some other members of staff.
We witnessed occasions where staff appeared to be spoken to or treated quite harshly by guests, and five months into what I understand is roughly a seven or eight-month season, perhaps some fatigue is inevitable.
That’s not to excuse poor service where it occurs, but sometimes it’s worth remembering that the person behind the bar is still a person.
Value for Money
This is probably where Papillon Ayscha deserves some real credit.
Turkey still has a reputation for offering excellent value for money and, in my opinion, Papillon Ayscha is helping to uphold that reputation.
If you went to Greece, Spain or the Canary Islands looking for a comparable combination of hotel quality, food and drink variety, pools, children’s facilities, sports and nightly entertainment, I genuinely believe you could easily find yourself paying 50–100% more.
And that’s perhaps the best way to judge the hotel.
Is every element absolutely perfect? No.
Is there a huge amount here for what you’re paying? Absolutely.
Final Thoughts
My main suggestion would be that, despite being at a very comprehensive all-inclusive resort, book a couple of excursions and get out and explore Turkey as well.
It breaks up the holiday, particularly if you start finding the evening entertainment a little repetitive, gives everyone something different to look forward to and creates some completely different family memories.
Papillon Ayscha is a very well presented, extremely well-equipped family resort with excellent food choice, good pools, fantastic younger children’s facilities and entertainment delivered to an impressively high technical standard.
Go understanding that you’re visiting an international resort rather than a British-orientated hotel. Embrace the differences, don’t allow the occasional cultural clash to bother you, and perhaps allow that famous British stiff upper lip to slip for a week or two.
Do that, and Papillon Ayscha offers an awful lot of family holiday for your money.
We certainly came away feeling we’d received excellent value from ours."
