The airport is a bigger decision than couples realise, because it is the one variable that touches every guest.

The five that matter

Antalya (AYT). The densest route network in the country. Direct flights from more than forty European cities in season, and from more than a dozen German ones. Serves Antalya, Belek and Side, transfers of fifteen minutes to an hour.

Dalaman (DLM). The British and Irish airport. High volume from UK regional airports through the summer. Serves Fethiye and Ölüdeniz at an hour, and Kalkan at two and a half.

Milas-Bodrum (BJV). Good European coverage in season, thinner in the shoulder months. Serves the Bodrum peninsula at forty-five minutes.

İzmir (ADB). Solid, unglamorous, well connected. Serves Çeşme and Alaçatı at seventy-five minutes on a motorway.

İstanbul (IST). The widest network of any airport in Europe. Serves İstanbul itself, and connects to everywhere else in Türkiye if your guests are coming from outside Europe.

The rule of thumb

Match the airport to where the largest block of your guest list lives.

  • Mostly British or Irish? Dalaman, and therefore Fethiye or Kalkan.
  • Mostly German, Dutch or Austrian? Antalya, and therefore Belek or Side.
  • Scattered across three continents? İstanbul, because it removes a connection for almost everyone.
  • Mostly from the Gulf? İstanbul or Bodrum via İstanbul.

Seasonality, which nobody checks

Direct routes to the coastal airports are seasonal. A route that operates four times a week in July may not operate at all in April or November.

This bites hardest at the shoulders. Couples fall in love with an early-May date, then discover that half their guest list has to connect through İstanbul because the direct route does not start until the end of the month.

We check the actual schedule for your date and your guests' home airports before confirming a region. It takes twenty minutes and it has changed several couples' plans.

The school-holiday effect

The fare difference between the first two weeks of September and the last week is not small.

Northern European school holidays end at different points, but broadly, prices drop sharply in the last week of September and stay low through October. If a third of your guest list is bringing children, that fortnight is worth planning around, and it happens to be the best weather window of the year as well.

The same effect works in reverse at the start of the season: late April and early May are cheap, and warm enough on the Antalya coast if not everywhere.

Transfer time is part of the flight decision

A cheap flight into an airport two and a half hours from the venue is not always the better deal.

The extreme case on this coast is Dalaman to Kalkan. It is a beautiful drive and it is two and a half hours, twice, for every guest. For a couple staying a week that is nothing. For a guest coming for three nights it is a fifth of their daylight.

Chloe and Ryan did exactly this arithmetic across sixty-two guests and chose Ölüdeniz over Kalkan on the strength of it.

What to tell your guests

Put the airport name in the save-the-date, twelve months out. Not the venue, not the region. The airport. It is the only thing they need to start pricing.

Then, in the guest page at eight months, give them:

  • The airport code
  • Typical transfer time to the hotel
  • Two or three carriers that fly the route from their region
  • A note about whether the route is seasonal

What we handle

Transfers, booked against arrival waves rather than individual flights. Six guests landing within ninety minutes share a minibus; the one arriving at two in the morning gets a car. Nobody stands in a terminal, and nobody hires a car they will use once.

If the region is not settled yet

What to send your guests and when, and how the region decision works once you know which airport.