AQI Pegasos World Hotel in Side

The rooms are gorgeous, the whole hotel is stunning! The pools are massive, the waterpark has a great selection of slides, although my daughter said the metal stairs and grating you had to stand on hurt her feet pretty bad so she couldnt spend long at a time at the waterpark. The beach is gorgeous, there are plenty of loungers everywhere and the entertainment staff were brilliant fun - we loved doing the water drums.

While we were there and since coming home our party and a friend I met over there's family were all extremely unwell. My husband basically couldnt leave the room the whole holiday and TUI was telling people no one had reported illness when we had told the hotel he was unwell and reported illness to TUI as had several other families.

We created a Facebook post when home because I ended up in a&e with a bacterial infection (confirmed to be e. coli) and at least 40 other people commented saying they, their family and friends all fell ill around the same time as us or just before or after we visited - with several others having to go to a&e upon returning home too. No compensation because we didnt see a Turkish doctor, but the NHS website states not to see a doctor unless extremely unwell in yhe case of d&v and to isolate if unwell, which is what we did. My daughter had to stay in the room for 2 days and I didnt start feeling unwell until the day we were leaving. So just a word of warning. We didn't drink tap water, didnt eat any outside food before falling ill, we washed our hands regularly and brushed our teeth with bottled water too.

The restaurant said all food was kept to food safety standards, but the standards must be VERY different incthe UK than Turkey because i am trained in food safety and the buffets didnt have proper sneeze guards, the bread was entirely uncovered and we actively seen people drop it on the floor and just put it back on the cutting boards, food was often lukewarm and sometimes cold which is not within safe food standards in the UK, there is a minimum food holding temperature, and foods meant to be cold were also often not due to any refrigerated units not having any doors.

Any issues we had that we complained about we were made to sit while they discussed over our heads in Turkish knowing we couldnt have any input in the conversation and I just felt like an inconvenience the whole time.

Cleaning staff were very nice, spa staff were great, bar staff were great and the waitstaff in the restaurant were really nice too.

But I wouldn't go back.

Okay - let me start off with the good. The hotel is beautiful and in a great location close to the beach, the staff that we met outside of management and reception are fantastic (specifically Ozman and Muhsin(sp?) in the main restaurant. They really keep things moving and happy during meal times. The rooms are clean and spacious, housekeeping really keep on top of things. While that sounds like a good review, unfortunately it is all on the surface. The hotel as a whole have what seems to be a very tenuous grasp on the English language, which makes any form of assistance very difficult to come by - and unfortunately we needed it on more than one occasion. My wife is disabled, and the requirements we outlined and were promised would be met simply were not. They did not care or understand that this would be a big problem for us, and reception staff instead had a conversation amongst themselves in Turkish instead of addressing our concerns. It took until FIVE days into a TEN day holiday to have these issues resolved - meaning half of our holiday was made much more difficult than it needed to be. It took us involving TUI directly - at which point everyone seemed to suddenly understand and the issue was resolved within an hour. Perhaps we could have involved them sooner, but we also gave the hotel the benefit of the doubt and they did not, in the end, deserve it. On top of this - there seemed to be an outbreak of some kind at the time we were there. All three of us became ill with d+v, myself on the second night in the hotel and lasting through the entire holiday. We were far from the only ones. A community Facebook group gave us a number of at least thirty people unwell with the same symptoms, some hospitalised upon returning home due to the severity. I'm certain many more were sick but were not involved in the Facebook group. The hotel were made aware of this early into our stay and once again did nothing. Not so much as a get well soon until TUI became involved. I wrote a complaint about the numbers of people who were ill - and the next day, our last full day, the hotel left a pre-printed postcard hoping I "enjoyed the rest of my trip" and a mass produced cheap pendant for my troubles. When things are going well this hotel is great. If you have a problem, they will not help you. I simply cannot recommend a place that will do nothing for you if anything goes wrong - especially when it costs thousands of pounds to visit.