Welcome to our hand-made hotel...

Here we are, the daughters Ebru (on the left) and Hale (on the right) and the parents ( Ms. Midori and Mr. Atakan Öztaylan).

Coming here and having their calmest and most relaxing holiday ever, everybody wonders how we found this beutiful place and were able to build this hotel in the middle of nature where there was nothing about modern life like electricity,water etc.at that time.

Our story begins like this:

Mr. Atakan wanted to buy a land in the 1987. He knew that buying a land was quite difficult but he also knew that there were undiscovered beautiful places on the coasts of Turkey. He drove all the way by the Mediterranean and the south Aegean coasts but couldn't find a land that met his expectations. Gölköy was his last stop, but he was hopeless anyway.
Drinking his last glass of tea in the coffee house of the village, he accidentally asked the villagers if there was a land that he could buy, they thought of it and told him: "hmmm...Yes, there is a land in Paradise Bay, but there is nothing there and it's a natural preservation area, even if you buy it, you can't build anything on it." But Mr. Atakan wanted to see the land and as soon as he saw the place, he fell in love with it. " Even if I can't build a house on it, I can make myself the smallest hut and live here when I get retired..." The Paraside Bay was all covered with a very old forest at that time.
Unfortunately, a big fire broke out in 1989 and most part of this beautiful old forest burned. After that, the bay was opened to tourism with special permission.

The building of the hotel took quite a lot of time. He continued building it for years with great sacrifices and working very hard, putting almost every penny he earned from his little factory to the hotel. Finally in 1997, he decided to close his factory and move to Bodrum. With Ms. Midori and our dog Ramo, they moved to Bodrum.

The hotel was in a bad condition when they first came here and there were loads of hard work to be done. And Mr. Atakan and Ms.Midori started working. They did incredible hard work here, from lifting the heaviest engines at times to planting almost everything in the garden. In 1999, we also joined them, Hale being stable and staying here, but Ebru and her twin sister Ayse, from time to time.

We, as a family, did a lot of hard work at the hotel, planting, building, painting etc.and we put all our effort and love into this place.We think of this place as our home, a home that we built almost on our own. And therefore our guests are our "real guests", as this place is not a classical hotel where the owners are far away somewhere, and there is the manager and his staff. It's not like that here at all.

You might wonder why it took us so long to open the hotel. After the fire, the government let the fish farms to settle down in this beautiful bay.Mr. Atakan sued the fish farms, and even the government for ruining the Paradise Bay. And at last, he was successful. Now there aren't any fish farms in our bay and the nature recovered itsef almost completely, but it will of course take some more time to be exactly the same as it used to be in the 1980's.

And about our backgrounds...

Mr. Atakan,born 1940, is an electrical engineer who had a little selotape factory in Istanbul before he settled down here.That's why he has this mechanical genius and knows how to fix and build everything, which was very essential when they first came to the hotel.

 

Ms. Midori, born 1941, is Japanese and is a very good cook and gardner. She was a hostess in Lufthansa before she got married. She has great interest in cooking, cooks excellent Turkish and Japanese dishes and always reads and watches everything about cooking, taking notes. She makes a fusion of eastern and Turkish cuisines creating really mouth-watering incredible dishes. We must be the luckiest people to have the chance to eat so delicious food everyday. And about her reationship with plants...She has this extraordinary feeling about plants as though she can feel what they need. She is also an experienced ikebana teacher and has taught in Japan and also in Turkey.

The daughters Hale and Ebru look very young but they aren't. It's their Japanese genes that help them look so young. Hale was born in 1977 and Ebru & her twin sister Ayse in 1974. (We might delete the birthdays when we get older!).Hale's education was on tourism and hotel management at college. She got her education in Switzerland and also in Australia. She worked for sometime in Istanbul and then moved to Bodrum.She is also a licenced scuba diver,and likes diving very much.

 

 

Ebru studied art, stage and costume designing for the theatre, at Mimar Sinan Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul. She worked as an art director in various films and TV series, also as a designer for shop windows and illustrator of children's books. She has about 15 books published, four of which she also wrote the stories. The wall-paintings, the elevator paintings and the room numbers at the hotel are all her artwork.

Ebru's twin sister Ayse, now lives in Istanbul. She studied business administration engineering and now works as a reserarch manager in a well known research company at the moment.
Our elder brother Merih, born 1963, also lives in Istanbul with his family. He studied electonical engineering and became an award winning computer effects designer for the film industry.

And our dogs Ramo, Poch and Kuri. Probably non of you will meet them except Poch as they are Rottweillers and are not as hospitable as we are. They have this strong sense of protecting their land and family. You might hear them barking at times, but be sure that they are barking because they just want to protect the hotel (and you of course). They are members of our family, and we love them more than anything else. I know that those of you who have pets will understand us very well.

And this was our story...
We hope that we can meet you some day, and have you here as our guests. Be sure that we will do our best to make your stay pleasant and comfortable, and we wish to make friends with you all...