Should All-Inclusive Holidays Be Banned in Turkey? The Debate Behind the Buffet
- Martin
- 14 hours ago
- 4 min read
Turkey’s debate about all-inclusive holidays isn’t really about buffets or free drinks. It’s about what happens to resort towns when visitors never leave their hotels - and it made me rethink the way I travel.
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At first glance, it sounds like the sort of question you’d expect to find in a heated Facebook comment thread. But it’s actually a debate that keeps resurfacing in Turkey. Time and again, politicians, tourism organisations and local business owners point to all-inclusive holidays as one of the reasons restaurants, cafés and shops in the country’s resort towns are losing customers.
And before you think this is about to turn into a rant against all-inclusive holidays, you’re very much mistaken.
I’ve stayed at all-inclusive hotels myself on several occasions. I’ve enjoyed the “everything deep-fried” buffet and queued longer for a watered-down drink in a little plastic cup than I’ve ever queued at security in Copenhagen Airport in the middle of July.
So I completely understand why millions of people from around the world choose this type of holiday every year. It’s convenient, relaxing and makes it easy to keep the holiday budget under control.
But the more I’ve looked into the debate, the clearer it has become that it’s about far more than buffet restaurants and unlimited drinks. It’s really about how resort towns develop.
A large hotel isn’t just a hotel. It creates jobs and attracts people. The staff live, shop and spend their lives in the local area, making the hotel an important part of the local economy. Around it, an entire community grows.
But there’s another side to the story. Many hotels have gradually become so self-contained that guests hardly need to leave the grounds. Restaurants, cafés, bars, shops, a spa, a private beach and entertainment are all available behind the hotel’s walls.
That’s especially true of hotels located in or right next to established resort towns, where local restaurants, cafés and shops are only a few minutes’ walk away. But the more that moves behind the hotel gates, the less life remains outside them. And that’s exactly the development many people in Turkey are debating.
The discussion is particularly relevant in Turkey’s classic holiday destinations such as Antalya, Alanya, Marmaris, Bodrum and Kuşadası. Here, all-inclusive tourism plays a much bigger role than it does in Istanbul, where most visitors still use the city itself as part of their holiday. But that doesn’t change the underlying question: what happens to a resort town if its visitors never leave the hotel?
And that made me wonder whether the debate should really be about something else entirely.
Because I completely understand why people choose all-inclusive holidays. But if the hotel became the entire holiday, I’d feel I was missing out - quite a lot, in fact. The experiences you remember long after you’ve returned home usually happen outside the hotel.
If the cafés, restaurants and small independent shops no longer have customers, they gradually disappear. And eventually, the hotel becomes the holiday itself instead of a base from which to explore the town.
Maybe that’s why the debate keeps coming back. It’s not just about hotels - it’s also about the kind of tourism a country wants to build. The quick dollar can be tempting for both investors and public authorities, but if guests never venture beyond the hotel grounds, it’s worth asking who really benefits from the tourism.
That’s how I feel when I travel back to Denmark as well. I don’t just stay with family and friends. I go out, see what’s changed since my last visit, return to places I love and experience the town all over again.
For me, that’s part of travelling. I want to experience the place I’ve come to. I want to stumble across small places along the way, have a coffee at a local café, eat at a restaurant I happen to walk past and discover the things that aren’t listed in the hotel’s activity programme.
Maybe that’s where the debate really comes together. If resort towns are to remain vibrant, it takes both hotels that open themselves up to the town and guests who actually want to experience it.
It’s certainly made me think about my own responsibility when I travel. Not because I feel I have to, but because I believe both the destination and I get more out of the journey.
I don’t think the answer is to ban all-inclusive holidays. But I do understand why the debate keeps returning. Because in the end, it’s not just about hotels. It’s also about the kind of holidays we want - and the kind of resort towns we want future travellers to experience.
