Absolutely incredible stay at Club Med Palmiye - 12 days of paradise!
What in incredible trip - it was our first club med summer after doing a winter trip at Christmas.
The food is incredible! Shoutout to the Baklava which was such high quality and we loved tasting local Turkish dishes, as well as some home favourites.
My husband loved the excersise classes - doing a 2hr workout every day really helped with the buffet - the aquarobics class was the best and most intensive he has experienced at a hotel - and that the instructors were incredibly enthusiastic.
We have travelled the world and tried many kids clubs - this is one of the best.
Our oldest son learned everything from Archery to Kayaking to Circus skills (thank you Ana and Elliott for taking him from crying and too scared to swinging backwards on his knees and a triple somersault!)
Jordan and Joaquim were incredible (we knew Joaquim from our last Club Med trip and immediately recognized Teddy) they took such great care of him - thank you to you guys and the rest of the team for being fantastic and making it ‘the best kids club ever’
The baby club for our 23 month old was equally amazing. Thomas was so attentive, friendly and looked after our son amazingly - there was never a miscommunication or a moment we had to be worried when our son was in his care. The rest of the team were equally amazing - thank you Ayse, Sergul, Ombeline, Melike, Sabrina and Mathieu and Sulla :)
Killian and Emilie were incredible managers organizing everything down to the last minute - we can’t wait to be back for the ‘Grand Goûter’ again!
Besides the kids club Ali Han (bar) and Zinar (lifeguard) at the Zen pool made sure the adults trip felt 5*. Both were incredibly friendly and both went out of their way to feel special. Ali knew our order after the first day and was so friendly we would come back just for him!
Murat and Quelia (who we also met at winter Club Med) at the bars were also amazing! And Achraf the assistant manager at the Bosphore restaurant was the most hardworking, friendly person I have seen! He was everywhere all the time, serving everything so quickly while managing an air of calm!
While the Original GM was away - Hugo did a phenomenal job of running the whole resort and making everyone feel special.
Two major point to note -
- the front desk was honestly mixed. While we had incredible people like Jay and Camille, who tried to solve your problems and were friendly, there were others like Aminata who was incredibly rude to me every time I asked for something basic and would consistently say no to anything asked (even if it wasn’t true, like can you buy an umbrella on site? Are there board games we can play?) one truly memorable experience was when I asked for a late checkout and if we could leave the luggage outside the room to be collected - she said no and that I could go and find a manager herself as that wasn’t her job. When my husband went over to ask why she was consistently talking to my wife this way she said it was a translation issue - but I was speaking both English and French. Extremely offputting and she shouldn’t be in a customer service role.
- The photographers - Lara was amazing and so were most of the photographers like Teo - however when coming to buy photos we have never encountered such rudeness (it rivaled Aminatas). Mavi was downright rude, and so offputting. It made us feel so unwelcome when we were trying to buy photographs. Luckily Lara the next day walked us through how to do everything but the whole experience with Mavi put a sour taste in our mouth.
Overall an incredible experience and I want to thank the team for making our holiday truly special! Looking forward to the winter with Club Med and returning to Turkey next year!