Bodrum: the chic Med resort drawing a smart summer crowd

It has superyachts in the marina, Nobu by the water and celebrities at the beach clubs. Antonia Windsor checks out the resort’s new high-end places to stay

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Villa Macakizi

Antonia Windsor / Monday August 01 2022, 12.01am BST, The Times

The road to Yalikavak marina is lined with ancient olive and almond trees rising from dusty scrubland. It feels as though you might turn off any minute into a primitive smallholding with a few scraggy goats and free-roaming hens. Instead, you arrive into a different world entirely, a place where gleaming superyachts jostle for space beside a pristine promenade lined with designer shops in which haute couture is “curated” and hung sparsely on rails.

The Bodrum peninsula, a thumb of land that juts into the Aegean Sea in the southwest corner of Turkey, just north of the Greek island Kos, is very much not what it seems at first glance. It’s dubbed the Turkish Riviera, and often compared to St Tropez for the glut of private villas being built up the hillsides around the coast, which sell off-plan for in excess of £3 million. The best bays have been claimed by international luxury hotel brands: The Mandarin Oriental opened in 2014, the Edition, Aman and Six Senses followed in 2018. A new Four Seasons is being built and there are rumours Bulgari is about to build on an unspoilt stretch of sand.

Yalikavak, Turkey’s first high-capacity mega-yacht marina, which opened in 2017, has largely been credited with kick-starting the boom in luxury tourism.

Lucca Beach in Paradise Bay

“If you want to tour the Greek islands and have a private plane or yacht, this is the place to start,” says Cem Mirap, founder of cult Istanbul restaurant Lucca. “Bodrum has a world-class airport and one of the few marinas in the world with space for multiple superyachts.”

Mirap is one of a growing band of Istanbul entrepreneurs opening Bodrum outlets; last year he launched Lucca by the Sea at the Mandarin Oriental, Bodrum, and this year he has expanded with Lucca Beach, a beach club on the sand in Paradise Bay. It feels like Bodrum is becoming “Istanbul-on-Sea”.

But, he explains, it is more than just infrastructure that has made Bodrum a magnet for celebrities and the super-rich. “This place has history, it has a story. For a destination to become this popular, some magic has to happen.”

To trace the origins of the story, I head to the Macakizi hotel on the edge of trendy Turkbuku Bay. This legendary hotel is the haunt of celebrities (Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell are regulars). They come to lounge on decks that extend into the Aegean, to be scrubbed and massaged in the hammam and to party into the small hours at the beach club; but mostly they come for the warm welcome and unwavering discretion of owner Sahir Erozan.

Bodrum Loft

Erozan continues a tradition of hosting celebrities on this blessed stretch of Turkish coast that his mother initiated in the 1970s. I meet him at the bar, where he’s sitting with his signature Cohiba cigar between his lips and one of his vast collection of scarves hung loosely around his neck. His eyes are warm and friendly, his smile wide. To the sound of the cocktail shaker mixing cool drinks for the designer clothing-clad guests who multiply as the evening progresses, Erozan tells me how it all began.

“My mother was like a personality in Bodrum,” he explains. “Have you heard of Régine of Paris, who started the first nightclub? She was the Bodrum equivalent . . . only she started the first beach club.”

Ayla Emiroglu moved to the region in 1977 and opened a B&B that attracted the intelligentsia from Istanbul. Then Ahmet Ertegun, the co-founder of Atlantic Records, bought a house nearby.

“My mother’s bar was always filled with famous writers and artists, it was a very bohemian place,” says Erozan. “Then Ahmet would come one day with Mick Jagger, next day with Chuck Berry or Bette Midler; every day, all summer long, you’d meet people you’d only seen in magazines.”

The pool at Bodrum Loft

Moving from Bodrum town on the south coast to Torba Bay in the north, she expanded her business until, around the millennium, Erozan decided to leave the restaurants he had successfully established in Washington, the US, and help his mother turn her B&B into a hotel.

“When this property came up here in Turkbuku, just west from Torba, I swam here, I smelled it, I walked around it and I loved the place because it had the right angle of the sun, it was totally protected — a perfect location.”

In 2000, the hotel opened in his mother’s style: rooms with no televisions and simple Ottolenghi-style buffet lunches. It was frequented by the grown-up children of those stars who’d come to the first B&B all those decades before, along with political friends Erozan had made in Washington, such as Caroline Kennedy and Chelsea Clinton.

“Over time, international chains started coming and Bodrum became an international destination,” says Erozan. As word spread among the It-crowd, the hotel grew and evolved into the five-star place it is today.

I ask Erozan when he felt the scene in Bodrum turn into the ultra-luxury one it is now. “The very high-end luxury is three years old, thanks to the marina,” he says. “But demand created the marina. That level of client was already coming to these hotels, enabling the marina to convince the big brands to move in.”

The lobby at Villa Macakizi

Erozan is catering to this new discreet, ultra-wealthy tourist with the launch of Villa Macakizi, an exclusive-hire mansion a ten-minute boat ride away on Paradise Bay. We get there the next day in his speedboat. The gleaming white building, designed by Italian architect Fabrizia Frezza, emerges on the coastline enveloped in a cloud of bright pink bougainvillaea.

As we walk down the pontoon, I spot a wooden banqueting table beneath a pine tree strung with wicker-shaded fairy lights. It seems styled for an Instagram shoot, but you’re unlikely to see pictures on social media; guests come to this ten-room hideaway for complete privacy.

The villa is fully serviced by the hotel and comes with a Venetian chef, Carlo Bernardini, who creates bespoke menus of Italian-influenced fine-dining, but can also cook up a breakfast omelette or a barbecue lunch.

The interiors are the work of the designer Barbara Pensoy, who has developed an upmarket boho style, with Turkish carpets, floor-to-ceiling houseplants and Italian hand-painted bathroom tiles. The walls are adorned with artworks, including black-and-white photographs of Erozan and his mother in the 1970s and 1980s, lounging and partying with a host of famous people. You can party here, too, as the villa has its own DJ booth, wine room, spa and swimming pool.

“It works for celebrations,” says Erozan. “Because 20 people can stay here, but Carlo can easily cater for parties of 50 or 60 people and the guests can take rooms at the hotel, so it provides great flexibility.”

If you were staying here, you’d be forgiven for keeping entirely to yourself and enjoying Bernardini’s cuisine every day, but it would be a shame to miss the colourful salads — pomegranate and beetroot; butternut squash and lentil — from the buffet lunch at the Macakizi hotel.

Bodrum marina, looking towards the castle

At the marina you’ll find restaurant outposts of Novikov, Zuma and Bagatelle. And if you hop on a boat towards Torba Bay, you’ll find the newly opened Nobu Bodrum at the Bodrum Loft hotel. The Nobu is run by the Süzer Group, owner of the Ritz-Carlton Istanbul, which launched Turkey’s first Nobu there last year. It has brought a touch of glamour to the villa-only Bodrum Loft resort, which opened just before the pandemic struck, and has until recently been occupied almost exclusively by wealthy Istanbulites who were looking for a coastal retreat to work away from the city. The architecturally striking villas (a wall of glass in the master bedrooms frames the sea views), can be rented for the entire season (£69,000 from May to October) but are put into a rental pool when the “owners” are away, so British guests have taken advantage of nightly room rates. Here you can enjoy the space and privacy of a villa along with the services you’d expect from a hotel, including a pool, spa, beach deck, restaurants and room service.

While tucking into fresh sashimi at Nobu with a jasmine-scented breeze coming in off the sea, surrounded by the quiet conversation of linen-clad sophisticates, I have to agree with Cem Mirap. Some magic has happened in Bodrum.

Antonia Windsor was a guest of Macakizi, which has half-board garden-view doubles from £550, including transfers, and Bodrum Loft, which has room-only doubles from £380. Villa Macakizi can be rented on an exclusive-hire basis from £18,770 per night; a two-bedroom villa at Bodrum Loft is from £384 per night. Fly to Bodrum

Mandarin Oriental

Three more luxury hotels in Bodrum

1. Mandarin Oriental

Mandarin Oriental, Bodrum is a village of hotel rooms, suites and villas that rise up the hillside from the golden sand of Paradise Bay. Built among 27,000 olive trees, the hotel has some of the best designer shops in the area — Hermès, La Perla, Chanel and Missoni. Tables overlook the sea at the Bodrum Hakkasan, one of eight restaurants on site, which buzzes with guests who drop by in private yachts. Suites are spacious, with private plunge pools and Diptyque bath products. The waterfront town of Golturkbuku is a ten-minute drive away.

Bodrum Edition

2. Bodrum Edition

This elegant resort with impeccable service near Yalikavak marina is popular with party people who go to lounge in the private cabanas by the infinity pool, drink cocktails to DJ-spun tunes in the beach club and dine on the delicious menus created by the pioneering Peruvian chef Diego Muñoz, which are served on the outdoor terraces of Brava and Kitchen. Daily yoga classes take place alfresco and rooms and suites have balconies overlooking the Aegean sea.

The pool at Caresse

3. Caresse

At the five-star Caresse Hotel, just outside Bodrum town, you’ll lounge in large egg beds at the beach and dine on sushi and sashimi at the hotel’s Buddha Bar beach restaurant. If you can tear yourself away from the sea, there’s an infinity pool and spa with open-air whirlpool and hammam. All rooms have sea-view balconies.

You can access the full article published by Antonia Windsor on The Times on Monday August 01 2022, 12.01am BST at the link below.

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