After a long, hard, stressful and very wet winter here we are again at the beginning of a promising season.
Very wet because from the end of November through to early April it rained and rained and rained for days on end …… it was one of the wettest winters I have ever seen! Typically this winter was one of our busiest in terms of construction projects and yet we really struggled to put men outside to carry on with the work.
The extreme weather of the winter months made life very difficult as it was a hard winter in the terms of work load. We had 5 large five bedroom villa projects, 2 smaller three bedroom villas, 6 two bedroom apartments, 5 big and 3 small renovation projects plus the usual upkeep and upgrade works on our restaurant kitchens and various Korsan owned accommodation.
It was a stressful winter for a number of reasons. The first shock came very early on a December morning when we woke to the sight of 6 harbour restaurants reduced to ashes! Of course, a legal investigation followed, and is on-going, with much uncertainty about what was going to happen, were we going to rebuild and if so would there be time before the beginning of the season?
The outcome is all six restaurants are being re-built by the council. In the next few months there will be an auction for five year leases on the restaurant units. I believe all the original 6 leaseholders, including Korsan, are going to bid for our old sites, however I am sure that there will be other contenders too. I will let you know the outcome once the auction has taken place. The council is making progress on the new project, the construction of the foundations and the retainer wall is taking place at the moment and we hope it will be completed and calm will return to Korsan Meze by the end of this week!
Sadly we have had a very emotionally stressful time just recently with the tragic death of one of our workers who was found unresponsive in his bed in one of our staff apartments. We are waiting on the official postmortem report but initial findings suggest he had a heart attack in the night in his sleep. We knew him and his young family well and it has been a very sad and upsetting time for us all. ‘Allah Rahmet Eglesin’ …. may he rest in peace.
On a brighter note, Korsan is celebrating it’s 37th season this year …. the sun is shining upon our beloved Kalkan once again. Although winter bookings across the board have been on the slow side this year and the restaurants had a slow start in May, we are in for a busy half-term week which is like a mini August for Kalkan. As a seasoned tourism businessman, my prediction is that, although we are not going to be able to reach the superb numbers of last season, after a slow May June will be good and July and August will be the usual rush, rush, rush. September will bring the return of regular Kalkan lovers and October will be the month to have a bit of fun!
Love to you all and for those of you who have missed us, this is the season to return!!…
Uluc