Hotel to hotel transfers between the Antalya resorts

02

Who moves hotel in the middle of a holiday

The commonest booking is a fortnight deliberately split in two, and the pairs repeat themselves. A week of ruins and flat sand at Side followed by a week of town, market and castle at Alanya. A first week on the eastern strip and a second at Kemer, where the mountains stand behind the beach and the water is reached over shingle. Belek for the golf and then somewhere with more to walk to in the evening. In every case the second hotel was chosen precisely because it is not like the first, which is why the two are rarely next door to each other.

The rest of the traffic has nothing to do with two-centre planning. Relatives arrive a week later and book a different resort, so one half of the family moves across to the other. A wedding takes a whole party from one hotel to another for two nights. A city stay in Antalya for the old town and the museum is followed by a beach hotel further east once the sightseeing is done. And some moves are simply corrections: a shingle bay turns out to be hard going with a toddler, a resort is quieter or louder than the photographs suggested, and the rest of the booking is made somewhere else.

• A fortnight split between two resorts, such as Side and Alanya or Kemer and Belek.
• Joining family or friends who booked a different hotel for the same week.
• A wedding or a family gathering held at a resort other than your own.
• A city hotel in Antalya first, then a beach hotel on the coast.
• A change of plan: the first hotel or its beach does not suit the children.

03

Checkout is late morning, check-in is mid-afternoon

The two clocks do not meet. You are out of one room before lunch and into the next one some hours later, and the car is the bridge across that gap rather than the cause of it. On a short move the gap is the whole problem: Side to Belek is 45 km and about 45 minutes, so leaving at checkout puts you at the second reception long before a room exists. Leaving after lunch puts you there at a sensible hour and costs you nothing, because you have already paid for the meal at the hotel you are leaving.

If you would rather go early, settle it with the new hotel rather than with us. Ask them in writing whether the desk will keep your cases until the room is ready, and whether the pool and the restaurant are open to you before you have a key. Some hotels are relaxed about all of it and some are not, and the answer belongs to them, not to the driver. What we fix is the pickup time, which is yours to choose when you book.

On the long routes the choice disappears. A drive of four hours means leaving at checkout whether you like it or not, because the alternative is arriving after dark on your first evening in a resort you do not know. If you want a stop on the way — a coffee, a lunch, half an hour at a viewpoint — say so when you book rather than on the road, since it changes the timing of the journey and the vehicle is held for you accordingly.

04

Luggage is why the taxi at the rank is the wrong vehicle

This is the real difference between a resort move and a short town ride, and it is the reason a rank taxi disappoints people. Whatever arrived from the airport in a van still needs a van. Worse, on a hotel move every single bag travels at once, including the first week of shopping: the ceramics, the towels, the box of sweets, the inflatable the children will not leave behind. A saloon with room for two cases in the boot cannot take a family of four out of a hotel driveway in the middle of their holiday, and finding that out at the door costs an hour nobody has.

So book on the bag count rather than the head count. Our vehicles run at roughly one large case per seat: an Economy Van takes up to 4 passengers and 4 suitcases, a Standard Van up to 7 and 7, a First Class Van up to 6 and 6, and a Minibus 12 or 16, with the larger parties travelling as two vans. Send the number of large cases with the number of people and the right vehicle is assigned before you travel rather than debated in front of the porters.

• Economy Van, 4 seats and 4 large cases: a couple or a small family moving on.
• Standard Van, 7 seats and 7 large cases: the usual answer once a week of shopping is aboard.
• First Class Van, 6 seats and 6 large cases, for a longer move in more room.
• Minibus, 12 or 16 seats, with the biggest parties going as two vehicles.
• Anything without a suitcase shape — pushchair, travel cot, golf bag, boards — listed item by item.
• Child seats, asked for in the booking message and not at the hotel door.

05

One fixed price per vehicle, published route by route

A resort move is priced the same way as an airport run: one fixed figure per vehicle, one way, in euro, agreed at the moment you book. It does not change with the number of people inside, so four adults and two children in one van is one fare rather than six. The city-to-city list on this site carries all eighty-four routes in both directions with the economy figure against each, which means you can see what Side to Alanya or Alanya to Kemer costs before you send a message. The other vehicle classes sit a fixed step above that figure, and the step is the same on every route rather than being worked out journey by journey.

Not every address is a town on that list, and it does not need to be. Hotels sit in villages that share a strip — Kumköy, Çolaklı, Titreyengöl and Sorgun all answer to Side, and the Alanya strip runs from Konaklı out to Mahmutlar — so the nearest town pair on the list tells you the order of the price and the exact address is confirmed when you book. If the new hotel is the base for the rest of the holiday and you already know your flight home, the airport leg can be arranged with the same booking.

06

The long moves, where the drive is most of the day

Some resort changes are not a transfer but a travel day, and they should be booked as one. Side to Fethiye is 295 km and close to 3 hours 50 minutes, because the route leaves the sea and crosses the plateau inland. Side to Pamukkale is 305 km and about four hours; from Alanya the same terraces are 370 km and nearer 4 hours 50. Even inside the bay, Alanya to Kemer is 175 km and around 2 hours 20, since the road goes through Antalya in the middle and a summer afternoon on the city ring costs real time.

Book these further ahead than a short hop, and plan the day around the drive rather than the drive around the day. Leave at checkout, eat on the road rather than waiting for the new hotel, and accept that the first evening of the second week is an arrival and not much else. With small children a journey of that length needs the child seat asked for at booking, and a comfort stop agreed in advance, because on the inland sections there is very little choice about where to pull in.

07

Give both hotel names in full, with the town

This is the detail that goes wrong most often, and the coast is built to make it go wrong. Hotel brands repeat along these hundred and fifty kilometres: Delphin Be Grand sits at the Lara end near the city, about fifteen kilometres from the terminal, while Delphin Deluxe is out at Okurcalar on the Alanya strip, some seventy-five kilometres further east. A brand name on its own can put a car on the wrong side of the bay. Give the full hotel name and the town or village with it, and there is nothing left to guess.

The same applies to the name of the resort itself, because as addresses they cover a lot of ground. Side as a destination reaches from Evrenseki and Kumköy to Sorgun and Çolaklı; Kemer covers Beldibi at one end and Tekirova at the other. If either end of your move is an apartment rather than a hotel, the block name and the street matter more than the district, since the residential lanes are narrow and often one-way. Everything else is short: a date, a time, who is travelling and what is coming with you.

• Both hotels by their full published name, each with its town or village.
• The date and the pickup time you want, worked out from your checkout hour.
• Passengers, with the ages of any children travelling.
• The number of large suitcases, plus pushchairs, cots or sports equipment.
• Anything that must ride in the cabin rather than the boot: medication, a cool bag, the pushchair you want first out.
• A phone or WhatsApp number that will be reachable on the day.
• Whether you also want the airport leg at the end of the stay.