Golden Beach Bodrum

Me and my family visited this hotel in July 2023, 12 of us in total across 5 rooms.
We booked the holiday through Thomas cook.
To start with none of us had visited Turkey before this trip, we read a lot of reviews and noticed not many were left by English people so thought it would be good to put our opinion across to help others.
Some quick points if you don't have much time.

- Do not book an excursion at the hotel and definitely not with someone called carlos

-food is not as bad as some reviews may suggest but it is repetitive

-some of the staff are pervy and some house keepers will help themselves to your aftershave/perfume

-the bell boys will try to sell you a SIM card and expect a tip for openings your room door and turning your tv on, just tell them to leave.

-the rooms are okay but as we were spread over 5 we got to see the quality of each room varied quite dramatically.

Traffic gets quite bad in bodrum so expect your transfer to take longer if you land at peak time. Our transfers were with a company called holiday taxis they were desk 15 & 16 outside the airport exit, they were ready and waiting so no complaints there, but they told us someone would speak to us at the hotel and to make sure we report to reception at a certain time. This turns out to be someone selling excursions, in our case Carlos. Our advice would be not to book with them. For a start its nearly double the price, the transfer they arrange for you is a very old bus with no aircon and honestly it couldn't do more than 10mph up hill. They'll tell you the transfer is 20 minutes but then put you on a bus that stops at multiple hotels and ends up taking over 1 hour.

Outside the hotel there is a bus stop you can get to Bodrum town from here, it takes about 30minutes and cost us 50lira each person each way, they run pretty late and this is where you want to go for fake clothing etc. You can also book excursions here a lot cheaper than the hotel.

There is another bus stop just to the side more on the main road that goes to a nice town called turgutreis this one only costs about 15 lira per person each way. This town has some really nice shops, a marina, cheap supermarkets similar to Lidl and aldi and we learned later that you can also get boat trips from here that sound a lot better than those from bodrum so may be worth looking at.

Back to the hotel the food was nice just a bit repetitive at times.
They have an amphitheatre upstairs and some of the nights put on entertainment for adults which was quite good. The entertainment team specifically Marwin are very nice, he came across a bit annoying at 1st but he's just trying to do his job and is actually a really nice guy making the place a lot of fun.
They play games throughout the day that were really good.
A few of the waiters around the pool area namely Hasan are quite pervy so watch for that. I had to have a word with them, and it was dealt with but not nice for the girls around the pool.

You can get Wi-Fi anywhere in the hotel for 2£ a day and it was quite good, works everywhere in the hotel.

None of our shower water smelt but sometimes the bathroom itself did, I found this to be the drain in the floor and by spraying the shower down it seemed to clear it.

One last thing there are 2 shops up the hill as you come out of the hotel that are a lot cheaper than the shop on the hotel grounds, even if most of the staff when asked will tell you there are no shops.

A few of the staff that stood out for us in a good way
Marwin (entertainment)
Kaan (worked at the restaurant bar)
Hanifi (worked at the pool bar)
Emurlah (worked at the pool bar)
And someone we only knew as boss man also worked at the pool bar. All really nice people who deserve a shout out.

I think that covers everything, I personally wouldn't visit again but it really wasn't as bad as we was expecting.

Very friendly and welcoming. Great service and staff. BUT there are a few thing i have to mention. Number 1 there are reps/ tour leaders which they take the responsibility to take you out place like clubs and stuff, do not trust them all the time. There’s a guy called Micheal who takes out people who don’t speak Turkish. He will take you out for the first night and takes to nice places by the way you have to pay for that but after the first night he will tell you he is taking to a nice club/place then he just takes to another place and makes up lies and he will never refund your money. Please do not trust him. He is also very rude and tried to kiss my friend couple of times which made us very uncomfortable. We made a complaint to the manager of the hotel but they didn’t do anything. Number 2 there is no WIFI in the hotel room, you only have wifi in the lobby which is extremely weak. You can see on their website which says free wifi but that’s absolutely not true. Other than that, the rest was fine.

Good points:
The hotel has a great location near the beach, making it a beautiful place with good pools. The staff is friendly and helpful, always going above and beyond to ensure your happiness and satisfaction. If you have any requests, just ask them, and they will do their best to accommodate you. I highly recommend trying their affordable and enjoyable spa services. The beach is lovely, so take as many photos as you can.

Bad points:
Unfortunately, the room was too small, and the foldable seat for the third person was terrible and uncomfortable, making it unsuitable for a good night's sleep. Another issue was the placement of a chair in front of the mini-bar, preventing anyone from accessing or moving it, which was extremely inconvenient. The room cleanliness was lacking, and the dishes in the restaurant were not properly cleaned. The quality of the food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner was subpar. I suggest avoiding the meatball dishes, especially their hamburgers near the beach. Furthermore, there was ongoing construction near the hotel, with construction machinery producing disruptive and annoying noise. The overall condition of the place is quite old.