Holidays to Kalkan started back in the 70’s with backpackers from Europe stopping off at this pretty harbour for one or two nights staying in tiny pensions. In the 80’s an innovating tour operator called Tapestry Holidays came to Kalkan, saw its potential and started to offer quality holidays in the smaller pensions and villas. Tapestry was so successful that many entrepreneurial Turks started building small hotels to get into Tapestry’s brochure and fulfil the growing demand for holidays in Kalkan.

With the growing number of English guests visiting Kalkan came two growth businesses, high quality restaurants reflecting the more upmarket nature of the Tapestry clientele and the building of villas to satisfy the demand of Tapestry’s guests to buy property in Kalkan. Luckily the growth of the restaurants made each restaurant owner strive for better quality of food and service to better service the guests and given the restricted building policy in the old, original harbour town, this enhanced the reputation of Kalkan and enhanced the ambience. The growth of the villas however saw many new properties built around the hillsides and hamlets. Kisla, which is the area on the other side of the bay to Kalkan harbour, was non-existent ten years ago but now has a host of villas on every available bit of land.

Tapestry no longer exists but many of their staff are working with a new company called the Discerning Collection, a tour operator offering good quality holidays to Kalkan, Crete, Morocco, Mallorca, Italy and Malta in the Tapestry tradition of quality accommodation backed up by really good service. Hotels like the Asfiya, the Likya Residence and Spa and the Likya Villas are some of the quality accommodations in Kalkan on their site and are well worth a visit.