Where to stay in Marmaris: the best areas and resorts

Marmaris has two faces. By day it's all boats: gulets and party boats leave the harbour for the bay's islands and coves, and the long seafront promenade is lined with beach clubs and loungers. By night it's Bar Street, a lane of clubs and bars that roars until dawn. Up the hill, the little old town and castle are surprisingly peaceful.

Hotels along the beach are lively and sociable: a stylish beachfront hotel with a private beach section and jetty, an adults-only boutique hotel steps from the sea, and a modern spa hotel near the water parks, under 3 km from the centre. Dalaman airport is around 90 km away.

A few miles round the bay from Marmaris, İçmeler is its quieter, prettier neighbour. The sand-and-shingle beach is backed by a compact village of restaurants and shops, the pine-covered mountains rise steeply behind, and the water is calm. Water taxis and dolmuş minibuses run into Marmaris when you want a night out.

This is the bay's best spot for families, with big, well-equipped hotels right on the beach: a luxury resort right on the beach with watersports from windsurfing to scuba diving; a hotel with heated indoor and outdoor pools a five-minute walk from the centre; and a large resort between Marmaris and İçmeler facing the bay. Smaller hotels sit a few steps from the beach in the village centre.

The Datça peninsula juts out between the Aegean and the Mediterranean, a long, mountainous finger of land with some of the clearest water on the Turkish coast. Datça town has a harbour and waterfront restaurants, the old village of Eski Datça is all stone lanes and bougainvillea, and at the far tip lie the ruins of ancient Knidos.

Hotels are mostly small and simple: seaside hotels on their own little beaches at Palamutbükü and Ovabükü, a boutique hotel with a private beach and pool, and a larger resort in one of the peninsula's loveliest bays, styled with Ottoman and Seljuk touches. It's around an hour and a half from Marmaris by road, and worth every bend.

Tucked into the head of the Gökova Gulf, Akyaka is a small, laid-back village famous for its traditional wooden architecture and the Azmak, a clear, cold river lined with restaurants where you can watch fish and turtles drift past. The beach is sandy and shallow, and steady afternoon winds make the nearby Akçapınar beach a favourite for kitesurfers.

Accommodation is small-scale and good value: a beach hotel on the boardwalk with a private beach, an apart-hotel steps from the Azmak, a little hotel a three-minute walk from the beach, and aparthotel suites with a pool. Marmaris is around 30 km away.

Dalyan is one of the most memorable places on the coast. Its river winds through reed beds past the ancient city of Kaunos, whose Lycian tombs are carved into the cliffs above town, and down to İztuzu, a long sandy beach where loggerhead turtles nest. River boats ferry you to the beach, the mud baths and the ruins, and evenings are spent at riverside restaurants watching the tombs glow in the sunset.

Hotels are small, friendly and great value: an Ottoman-style mansion in a hidden garden near the riverbank, quiet apartments 400 metres from the centre, and simple hotels with pools near the rock tombs. Dalaman airport is about 30 minutes by car.

Sarigerme has one of the best beaches in the region, a long sweep of soft sand backed by pine woods, with a little island offshore and very little development. The big draw is location: Dalaman airport is only around 15 km away, so you can be on a sunbed within an hour of landing.

Hotels are mostly resort-style and well spread out: an adults-only hotel on the hillside above the bay with a spa and all-inclusive dining, a boutique adults-only hotel with mountain and sea views and a private beach, and a beachfront resort with water sports and a spa in a big park. Dalyan's river and rock tombs are a short drive away.