Review: The Bodrum EDITION hotel, Turkey (Marriott Bonvoy)
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This is our review of The Bodrum EDITION hotel in Turkey, part of Marriott Bonvoy.
Our family summer holiday brought us to Istanbul and Bodrum this year, and as both hotels had a points and loyalty angle we decided to cover them. We started off at the Ciragan Palace Kempinski hotel in Istanbul for four nights – you can read my review here.
Hotelier veteran Ian Schrager started EDITION in 2008 as a luxury boutique hotel brand in partnership with Marriott International. Although it sits as part of Marriott Bonvoy’s portfolio, the EDITION brand is a bit of an exception in that Marriott does not have full control.
The chain is aiming for 30 properties by 2027, although that will probably be it as Schrager has announced that he wants to move on to new projects.
It was my first visit to an EDITION hotel although HfP has covered a number before:
20-something Rhys wrote those three reviews. Given the reputation of Bodrum and the EDITION brand I was curious as to how two mid-lifers with two teenagers would find it.
We paid for our stay using Marriott Bonvoy points with a cash upgrade. The hotel didn’t know I would be reviewing it.
I should probably mention at this early stage that rooms here start at around €1,750 per night in peak season. Bodrum is far from cheap. We paid 85,000 Bonvoy points per night, which makes a mockery of the HfP ‘0.5p per Bonvoy point’ target valuation.
The Bodum EDITION website is here.
Arrival
We took a one-hour Turkish Airlines flight from the new Istanbul airport to Milas-Bodrum Airport. From there we had arranged a hotel car pick-up, taking roughly 60 minutes to the hotel.
Arriving on the Bodrum peninsula, my first impression was that it felt very Greek. Most houses are white and not taller than two storeys. Greece is, of course, just a stones throw away with Kos being connected to Bodrum by daily ferries.
The coastal areas of the peninsula are heavily built up, albeit low rise. The Bodrum EDITION sits on a slim piece of land on the northern coast.
The resort map below shows the entrance on the left on top of the hill and the beach on the right. The land cascades down towards the sea, with the space used smartly to accommodate 110 rooms, restaurants, bars, a pool, a spa and boutiques.
You can literally walk across the entire plot in under a minute, and even reception to beach takes only five minutes (downhill!).
The lobby
The hotel entrance is directly off the main coastal road. The EDITION vibe is set immediately as a group of young and dressed-in-white staff rush out to welcome you.
Coming into the lobby is frankly stunning:
The abundance of light and the cool interior set you in the holiday mood straight away. No extended wind-down is necessary! The reception staff welcomed us with a free ice cream, which always goes down well, especially if it is 30°C+ outside.
Stepping out of the lobby on the other side gives way to a wonderful view of the bay.
The rooms and facilities are arranged on terraces which wind down a steep slope until reaching the beach. Golf buggies can be ordered if required.
Our rooms at The Bodrum EDITION
We had originally booked two Deluxe queen guest rooms with no sea view.
Nearer to arrival, the hotel started to open up higher room categories for ‘cash and points’ redemptions. We ended up with one very large ‘Loft’ guest room without a sea view and one large Premier room with a sea view.
This is the Premier guest room with sea view. The room was, as you can see, minimalist in style with high quality natural materials used.
The room was very comfortable with plenty of space:
The bathroom was very much to my taste with marble and high quality fittings. The room was perfectly laid out and even with two people in there at once you were never in each others way.
It is really everything you need – natural light, a large shower, a separate bathtub, two sinks and a Japanese Toto (in the Loft room) toilet!
The room came with a small balcony with a table and two chairs and great views, especially at night when the coast is dotted with lights.
The second room we had was a Loft. Despite the name, these are on the ground floor of each villa.
The upside is that you get a lot more space than a standard room, including a very large patio terace. The downside is that you get people and buggies going past your window and the room is a little dark.
It’s worth noting that the ‘Loft’ rooms are cheaper than the Premier room I showed you above, despite being bigger, due to their lack of sea view. We were sea facing but planting obstructed virtually all of the bay.
The bathroom here had no natural light and, oddly (and not mentioned anywhere during the booking process), had a large steam room attached to the shower. American brand Le Labo provided the toiletries.
The large terrace is surrounded by shrubs with two sun loungers, one table and two chairs. As it was very hot during our stay (36°C in the last week of August, which was around five degrees higher than we expected) this was a pleasant area to chill and stay somewhat cooler.
Food and drink at The Bodrum EDITION
The hotel has five restaurants – two day restaurants and three evening places. The food here is at a VERY high level, far above what you may expect from a beach resort, and attracts a lot of diners from outside.
Everything we had was delicious, although you pay accordingly – the priciest meal we had was £400 for the four of us, with minimal alcohol. I made so many beautiful pictures of our food that it would make for a coffee table book frankly.
But let’s start in the morning.
Breakfast is served in Kitchen which doubles in the evening as a Michelin-starred fine dining Turkish restaurant.
All breakfast dishes are a la carte. Service is smooth and we had never a problem finding a table in the shade on the terrace.
On your first morning you are encouraged to take the ‘Traditional Experience’:
We received a table full of small sweet and savoury dishes including Turkish bakery, grape molasses, stuffed wine leaves, Turkish cheese selection, Kaymak & Aegean honey comb etc.. It was a feast!
You are unlikely to want this every day, but once you know what you like you can order individual items. We also added in more ‘standard’ breakfast items like pancakes (below pic) and avocado on toast.
As an example of how slick the staff are here, someone clearly compiles a list – based on what is charged to your room, I suspect – of where each guest ate the previous evening. The staff will casually drop it into conversation – ‘ah, you ate at XXXXX last night didn’t you, how was it?’.
On our first evening we had dinner at Inari which is a Japanese-inspired pop-up in collaboration with Istanbul’s Asian fusion concept, Inari Kujira. We loved it so much we came again on our last night.
This photo shows the restaurant in daylight close to the beach, although it has a different menu (and indeed a different name) during the day.
Here is the seabass ceviche I had – it tasted as good as it looks.
This was a mango cream hamachi:
On another evening we had dinner at ‘BRAVA by Stefano Ciotti’ which offers Italian cuisine. This restaurant is higher up on a terrace and has great views.
Here I had a beef carpaccio beautifully arranged on a “matching” plate.
This fish and seafood soup was delicious.
…. although nothing topped Inari for the creativity of the food and presentation.
The infinity pool
The pool is one level up from the beach and directly above it. It is large and from a certain angle you can’t distinguish between the pool and the sea beyond.
I should mention here that some room categories come with small private pools, but you do pay a substantial price premium for those.
There are many sun loungers as well as cabanas which can be booked separately. You will never struggle to get loungers by the pool or beach, even if you need four together as we did.
The service by the pool was slightly less full-on than by the beach – which I think we agreed was the most comprehensive beach service we’ve ever had, anywhere – but it was still impressive.
The only niggle is that we did feel that the sun umbrellas had been ordered deliberately small for aesthetic purposes. They look very smart when lined up but the amount of shade they offer isn’t huge.
The spa and gym
I didn’t use the spa but it looked very slick and surprisingly large, tucked away under a villa block. A Turkish hamam and other treatments are available here.
The gym was impressive with a wide array of machines.
One of the terraces had a table tennis table for less energetic exercise. Despite the heat in summer the entire hotel has lush gardens, with many olive trees full of fruit and a wide variety of flowers and shrubs. There were gardeners constantly working.
The beach
The beach is, to be honest, not very wide and is the neighbour of a small public beach used by inhabitants of the summer houses next door. Hotel guests can wander between these two beaches if they wish for some variety, although this doesn’t work in reverse.
On Saturday evening the beach was transformed into a dance floor with a bar, firepits and an impressive looking DJ system. The DJ was apparently a very high profile one flown in for the occasion and the hotel staff were super excited to have him.
To the right of the beach are restaurants and a long pier. The entire length of the pier comprises cabanas which offer direct access to the deeper waters.
Here is a better view of the cabanas on the pier – very lush!
On the opposite side of the pier was an area for watersports and boats. The turquoise water buggy in the front was the most popular although we could never persuade the kids to try anything.
The sea, in late August, was exceptionally warm and spending time in the water was the high point of the trip. The water is very clear – little grey fish are swarming around you!
Conclusion
We weren’t quite sure what to expect at The Bodrum EDITION and initially thought that five nights may be too much. (Marriott Bonvoy offers ‘5 nights for the points of 4’ on redemptions, so staying for four nights made no sense.) We were wrong.
We also thought that the resort wouldn’t necessarily be ‘right’ for us. However, after a day the permanent background music – which is suprisingly well curated – gets tuned out and you slip into the vibe.
The team of staff were genuinely on a par with the best we have ever experienced and took a real interest in their guests. It helps, of course, that the staff to guest ratio is very high. I don’t know the other five-star resorts in the area but the staff always made us feel that The EDITION was THE place to be.
Who is The Bodrum EDITION for? It feels very hip with young, enthusiastic and very friendly staff. I wouldn’t say that it is especially a place for families with young children, although there were some small kids. There were also some people who were clearly at the older end of the scale.
In truth, whilst the staff may have an average age under 30, there aren’t many potential guests of that age who can afford €1,750+ per night and it was an older crowd than we expected. The beach party on the Saturday night was an outlier but many of the guests had come from outside.
After five nights we were talking about coming back on our own in a few years once the kids do their own thing, and I wasn’t expecting to be saying that when we arrived.
PS: For sightseeing, local taxis are plentiful and cheap. We went to Bodrum town and visited the underwater archaeological museum in Bodrum castle which is outstanding – it is basically a collection of items rescued from ancient shipwrecks in the area. The hotel concierge team had played this down (they admitted that very few guests ask about cultural sites) but you should definitely go.
One evening we went to Yalikavak Marina which is ludicrously posh (huge Vuitton, Dior, Gucci etc etc boutiques) and had dinner there in a ‘fine’ kebab restaurant. This is only around 10 minutes away by taxi. On another evening we went to Gűsműslűk (circa 20 minutes taxi ride) for dinner. It’s tricky to explain but it is basically a one street village, with the street running along the edge of a picturesque lagoon and every spot taken by restaurants. It feels like you are in a scene from “Mamma Mia!” and was utterly charming.
Booking
Bodrum likes to think it is on a par with St Tropez, Capri etc and this is reflected in the prices. In peak season you won’t get change from €2,000 per night if you want a sea view. The Mandarin Oriental in Bodrum costs even more.
We used 425,500 Marriott Bonvoy points per room, so an average of 85,000 points per night. Given that we normally value 85,000 Bonvoy points at £425 (0.5p each) you can see that using points really paid off here. This books into an entry level Deluxe, no sea view, room.
The cash upgrade element was €1,960 in total for five nights for the Premier sea view room and €1,680 for five nights for the Loft room.
We tried to upgrade further using Marriott Bonvoy Nightly Upgrade Awards but the hotel was full over the weekend nights we were there and the upgrade did not clear.
The Bodrum EDITION is a seasonal property, open from April to November. Prices drop rapidly later in the season – for early October our Premier sea view room is down to €850 per night whilst the Loft room is €800.
If you are booking for cash, you will get a better deal if you use our luxury hotel booking partner Emyr Thomas. He is a Marriott ‘preferred partner’ agent and bookings through him come with:
- Upgrade on arrival, subject to availability
- Complimentary breakfast for two daily for duration of the stay
- $100 equivalent Food & Beverage credit once per stay
- Up to 15% discount on stays of 3+ days
- Early check-in / late check-out, subject to availability
You pay the Best Flexible Rate shown online and pay on departure as usual. You can contact Emyr by using the form on this page of HfP.
The Bodum EDITION website is here if you want to learn more.
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