Side East Beach Tours

Friendly stuff and good location

Overall the stay was 5* however I was let down at the very end by the a couple of the staff. I’ll go into detail of everything the hotel offers but could improve, but first I will explain what broke my review down from a 5* to a 3*. At the end of my stay, I asked for a cab to be called, I said I could use uber but I would trust your taxi people more. They said they will call it and will be here soon, I said ok. The man then said it’s his friend, it will be 15 minutes, I was hesitant as I wanted to be quick, but he said please have tea coffee snacks. I said ok, 25 minutes later this taxi arrived. I’m already a bit annoyed as I lost time 20m that I could have saved by calling a taxi myself. All apps I checked show 800-1000 Turkish lira. When the taxi arrived, the hotel worker said I will give you a fixed price 2000tl, ok? I immediately told him to unpack my bags, to which he then said ‘ok ok how much do you want to pay, if you call a taxi no one will come here anyways, I said yes they will, I will pay 1100tl, he said fine. But it completely ruined my entire stay that the own hotel worker is trying to scam me?!! I am a tourist, but I am Turkish, they even try to scam their own brothers! imagine if I was American or Arab. I did something nice and waited 25mins so their friend can make the money, I was rewarded with scamming, how nice of them. Regarding hotel 8.5/10: Room was great no complaints but it would be nice to have bath robes. Breakfast is nice, 7.5/10, not many options.

The hotel was fine and the staff was excellent BUT when they arranged the transport to the airport for our flight they did not ask us which airport (Istanbul has 2 large airports, IST and SAW) . We did not know this, we were delivered to IST (the wrong airport - and we had showed them the tickets) and had to rush by taxi to the SAW and missed the flight and luckily were able to purchase tix to another flight that day. This error/oversight cost us about $700 and could have been elevated had the hotel simple asked "which airport." Other then that, I would give the hotel a solid 4 star