This is not a family hotel. It’s a hotel for adults… where kids are very welcome. Have you ever heard of a kids club that is open until 2am? Sorry kids, but that’s so that the adults can have fun for longer, not you. This is what happens at the Maxx Royal hotel in Bodrum, the stretch of unbelievably pretty turquoise Turkish coastline which has also become a playground for the super-rich. With suites starting at £1000 a night, it’s a very exclusive hotel. Its private, secluded beach is surrounded on both sides by different levels of wooden decking, designed to maximise privacy for guests. It is in a calm little enclave, somehow both family-friendly but also glam. That could be because of the staff who tend to every tiny need or whim we or our children have, including (and I’m almost embarrassed to say how much I enjoyed this) the people who were employed to clean our sunglasses. Or it could be because of the other guests. When I visited, shortly after the hotel had opened, there was a huge spectrum of super-rich people, from conservative multi-generational Turkish families (one, I was told, had booked 42 suites to house his family for a reunion), to young and gorgeous families, to older couples on a big relax, to groups of friends who had clearly come to party in Scorpios, a high-end bar-beach club on the Maxx Royal estate.
Style
On entering Maxx Royal, there is a real sense of abundant space. The ceilings in the atrium are vast, with floor to ceiling windows opening onto a terrace with a semi-wraparound sea view on one side, and view up the hill over all the suites on the other. The suites take up most of the hill – the villas are the top tier (at the top), the Laguna suites are dotted around a seawater pool, then there are the normal suites. I really liked the natural style in which the hotel, which opened in May this year, has been designed. With the light wood cladding, enormous amount of greenery and trees, it slots rather elegantly into the landscape. Even the planting budget must go into the millions, though it’s so new, it’s already incredibly verdant with tropical and olive trees, and the smell is almost Provençal with the heat increasing the perfume of the lavender, with the noise of the cicadas.
The estate is so enormous, however, that you need to get around on golf buggy, escorted by the highly efficient fleet of charming drivers. These, and indeed anything else you might need during your stay, are organised by sending a message to your own private concierge via the hotel’s own app. We never had to wait more than a few minutes.
Rooms
Our suite was quite tight for a family of four – our son’s single bed was attached to the bottom of our bed, and our baby daughter’s cot only a couple of metres away. The whole suite was open plan, with the bathroom only separated by a wall which was open on both sides The sink area was clad in dark grey-green marble matching the wardrobe, the tiles shimmering dark green, drawers made of wood — all part of the design to fit as incongruously into the natural surroundings as possible. Catering to the billionaires who care about sustainability, there are recycling bins in each room, and the air con turns off automatically when you open the balcony window.
The children were given their own little washbag with mustela products and a little baby sponge. The roofs of other suites had green grass roofs, making our view down to the sea even lovelier. There was, of course, a wine and fruit fridge, and a special water cabinet, refilled every day (which the wine fridge sadly wasn’t), and snacks including Torres caviar crisps.
Food & Drink
The caviar crisps in the bedrooms were not the only caviar on the Maxx Royal estate, by any means. One of the 9 restaurants is Caviar Kaspia, a Parisian restaurant, where I was amused to see some children devouring a caviar-topped jacket potato for £180. There is also a two-Michelin-star restaurant, a restaurant from the LA chef Wolfgang Puck, a seafood restaurant, and more.
Breakfast was at the “24” restaurant. No buffet here, sir! Far too fancy for buffets. Here, there is an a la carte menu (everything from smoked salmon , and various trolleys wheeled around the enormous indoor-outdoor space, with cheeses, cured meats, and a desserts trolley filled with perfectly crafted patisserie and viennoiserie (we had a green striped perfectly symmetrical croissant, and a rich and velvety chocolate cake filled with mousse which was quite frankly wasted on my four year old). There was also a refrigerated wall of juices, Bircher mueslis, cereal, fruit.
Over at Scorpios (a buggy ride away, it sits on its own archipelago), the sister to the original bar-club in Mykonos which is legendary for attracting the great and the good for some pretty epic parties and A-list DJs, it’s more about the drink and the vibes than the food. A glass of rose started at £30, but it’s almost worth it for the incredible views out to sea, and over the mega yachts lined up along the coast, whose inhabitants jump into tenders and pop over to Scorpios.
Maxx royal has other hotels in Turkey, which are all inclusive. This is the first full board, a slight change in direction to attract a more exclusive clientele and compete with the Mandarin Oriental on the next bay along. Scorpios helps consolidate the rich party crowd they are attracting.
Half of Istanbul’s elite decamps to Bodrum each summer, to their yachts and villas. These are the people helping to fill the dance floor. As you relax on the Maxx private beach on Friday and Saturday afternoons, the thrum of the beat from the dark wood party palace is carried by the wind. Here with my two young kids, the FOMO is strong . I want to join the beautiful fun people dangling their legs over the edge of the jetty, cocktail in hand. Which makes it even better that my son keeps asking me to return him to the kids club aka Maxxi Land. I’m sure that’s what the baby would say too, if she could speak.
Facilities
Not only did my four year old son beg to be relieved of the arduous torture of swimming in the perfect green-blue sea or building sandcastles out of white sand, or eating from the quite extraordinary childrens’ menu (pulled chicken and vegetables in aromatic chicken broth, tomato and basil bisque with cream and basil oil, grilled salmon fillet with buttered vegetables – and of course mini burgers and hot dogs, too) at the elegant beachside restaurant Casa Sol, he also couldn’t wait to escape the freshwater infinity pool or the seawater one. Why? Because he was dying to get back to Maxxi Land, aka child heaven. On entering, our jaws all dropped. High-end design with Jeff Koons-style sculptures, giant rabbits built into the wall, enormous giraffe murals, sweeping wooden walls, and separate areas for the different ages of children. There was also, and this really was something else – a dormitory of cots and beds for the children so that the parents can stay out late. We also dropped our baby daughter off for her lunch nap each day, letting her be lulled to sleep by the specially chosen ‘sleep playlist’ in the cool, calm air conditioned room, watched on the video monitors by fully trained nursery staff. There was an art teacher, lego pits, ball pits, a VR room, cinema room, Playstation room (a 30 minute limit was imposed), a costume cupboard with 800 different options for dressing up, daily mini discos, workshops every day to teach the older children everything from fragrance-making to the life cycle of a butterfly. I can’t adequately put into words quite how extraordinary this place was. Is this what nurseries for the super rich are like ? I felt like I’d entered an alternate universe that I didn’t even know existed.
Spa and health club
In and around the health club, there are tennis courts (and an on-site coach), padel courts, an aerial yoga studio, Reformer pilates studio, and all the machines and weights you could want. On the bottom floor there is an indoor swimming pool, private hammam, steam room, sauna, Kneipp walk pool, rain shower… and everything is ginormous – the ceilings feel about three storeys high.
In the spa itself, I had a facial. My stern but charming beautician gave me a deep, full facial massage, a peel, two masks … and strict instructions not to go in the shower or sun for the rest of the day. She paused the facial after doing one side of the massage to show me the results and the change to the tightness of my eye and cheek area in particular was immediately visible. The massage also promotes collagen production so I’m hoping the genuinely quite dramatic change will stick around for a bit. Unsurprisingly in a country which so reveres youthful looks (plastic surgery and hair plugs are very popular) they know exactly what they’re doing and what the clientele want. They use Biologique Recherche skin care, which is designed to “restore the epidermis’s natural regenerating functions”.
Best for
An international crowd of multi-millionaire DJs, football managers, pop stars, tech entrepreneurs. We heard at least one helicopter arrive to drop someone off each day. The clientele is generally quite young, cool and very, very expensively dressed. I have never seen so many massive logos on bags and clothing in one place, and quite frankly I don’t know how most of the men even lifted their wrists, their watches were that big. Even the babies wore Chanel.
