Inns become beauty centers in the town of fairy chimneys

NEVŞEHİR – Doğan News Agency

AA Photos

Turkey’s first rock-carved underground mud bath will serve in the Cappadocia region, as local inns, which served as lemon storage facilities in the past, have been reorganized into an new tourist attraction. 

The underground mud bath center, which will host its guests accompanied with experts, features baths, mineral water and fish. 

The founders of the center, Taner Özkaradeniz and Burak Yüksel, said the facility would have a significant place among Cappadocia’s tourism alternatives. 

Özkaradeniz said they had reorganized three inns to establish the center, adding it would be the first of its kind in the field of health tourism. 

Besides the bath pool, the 2,000-square-meter facility offers a warm water pool, doctor fish, shopping and cafés. 

Cappadocia’s rock-carved inns have a significant place in the region, which was formed with the effect of lava spread by the Hasan and Erciyes mountains 60 million years ago, and are generally used as museums or storage. 

With the approval of the Health Ministry, tourism manager Özkaradeniz and constructor Yüksel have turned three of those inns into the mud bath facility. 

“Besides hot air balloons, Turkish nights and safari tours, the mud bath will be an alternative tourism field in the region,” they said. 

Özkaradeniz said they had been operating mud baths in their facilities in the western province of Muğla’s Dalyan district and the southern province of Antalya for many years. 

“Three or four years ago, we searched the places in Turkey for mud baths and decided on the Cappadocia region because it has been hosting foreign guests all the time. The region’s fairy chimneys and inns are well-known. We found these inns, which were lemon storage places, and established the facility,” said Özkaradeniz. 

He said the mud in their pool was the first product certified an “inorganic” product in Turkey by the Health Ministry, and continued: 

“It is movable. This mud is used in big hospitals such as the Çapa Hospital in Turkey for the treatment of rheumatism diseases. As well as these diseases, it is used in the treatment of eczema, acne, varix and cellulite and in cosmetics. This is why 1-1.5 million tourists host mud baths a year. Here, we expect to host 200,000 local and foreign guests in the first year. Russian and European tourists mainly come to Dalyan and Antalya. The tourist profile is different here. There are lots of far eastern tourists. We know that they are interested in cosmetics. We plan to host them in our facility.”