Why most British visitors to Marmaris end up booking with us
I was eleven years old the first time I sold a boat ticket. My father worked in Marmaris tourism, and during school holidays I’d help out at the harbour — handing out leaflets, walking British families to the right boat, occasionally translating when guests got confused with prices. By the time I was sixteen, I knew the schedule of every daily tour running out of Marmaris and which captains were trustworthy enough to send a family with you. By the time I was twenty-four, in 2014, I was running my own.
That’s not a marketing story. It’s just how I ended up doing this.
Twelve seasons later, Magia Travel is the company my eleven-year-old self would have wanted to work for. Twenty people in the office and on the road, twelve licensed guides, a forty-five-driver transfer fleet, and a list of tours that has grown from one — a daily boat trip — to more than forty.
Magia Turizm Taşımacılık İthalat ve İhracat Ltd. Şti.
That’s the long version of the company name. Most guests know us as Magia Travel — the trading name on the office sign on Kemal Seyfettin Elgin Bulvarı in central Marmaris, and the name we use everywhere we sell tours. Magia is the Italian word for magic — chosen because we wanted a name that worked in English, Turkish, and the half-dozen other languages spoken by people who come on holiday here.
We’re a TURSAB-licensed travel agency, licence number 11658, registered in 2015. TURSAB is the Turkish Travel Agencies Association — the regulatory body for all licensed tour operators in Turkey. Operating without a TURSAB licence is illegal. Operating with one means we carry full liability insurance on every tour, our guides are certified by the Ministry of Tourism, and the regulator has both our paperwork and a record of our complaint history. You can check the licence number at tursab.org.tr if you ever want to verify a Turkish operator before booking.
Where we are
Our office is on Kemal Seyfettin Elgin Bulvarı, the main boulevard running through central Marmaris. Walk-in any morning during the season — most of the team speaks English, the kettle is usually on, and we keep brochures in print for guests who’d rather hold something physical than scroll on a phone. The office is about ten minutes’ walk from the marina, fifteen from the main beach, and on every taxi driver’s mental map of the town.
If you’re staying in Marmaris and you want to plan your tours in person before booking, that’s the right way to do it. We can talk through what’s possible, build a custom multi-tour package, and write up the dates while you’re there.
What we run
We sell more than forty different tours and excursions from Marmaris, all run between April and end of October, all with free hotel pickup from Marmaris centre, Siteler, Armutalan, Icmeler, Turunc and Hisaronu. The catalogue covers:
Boat trips — the all-inclusive day cruises, the family pirate boat with foam party, the Cleopatra Island gulet tour, the Dalyan river boat to the turtle beach. Boat partners we’ve worked with for years run the actual vessels; we handle the booking, the transfer, and the responsibility if anything goes wrong.
Cultural day trips — Pamukkale and Hierapolis (UNESCO World Heritage), Dalyan with its Lycian rock tombs and thermal mud baths, Cleopatra Island with the ancient city of Kedrai. Our guides are Ministry of Tourism licensed.
Adventure and safari tours — jeep safari, buggy off-road, horse safari through pine forests. Three different operators run the vehicles; we run the booking and the pickup.
Family activities — Atlantis Waterpark tickets at half the gate price for children, family-friendly boat trips, horse safari for children from age 6.
Scuba diving — through a CMAS, PADI and NASDS-certified dive centre that’s operated in Marmaris since 2010. Introductory dives for beginners and deeper trips for certified divers, same boat, separate programmes.
VIP transfers and private tours — airport transfers, hotel-to-hotel transfers along the coast, private custom day tours for guests who’d rather not share a coach. The transfer fleet is forty-five drivers strong, running everything from solo airport pickups to fifty-seat coaches.
Some of these we run directly with our own staff and our own vehicles. Some we run in partnership with operators we’ve worked with for years — boat captains we trust, jeep companies whose safety record we know, restaurant partners at the lunch stops on the long tours. The model is straightforward: we’re responsible to you. We choose the partners. If anything goes wrong, you talk to us, not them.
Why we don’t take deposits
There’s a question I get from new guests at least once a week. “Why don’t you take a deposit when I book? Every other website asks for one.”
The answer is that we don’t need to. The model the aggregator websites use — pay now, get confirmation, possibly turn up — works for them because they make money from booking fees and currency conversion margins, and because their guests need a guarantee against a stranger on the internet. We’re not a stranger on the internet. We have an office you can walk into. We have a phone number that gets answered. We’ve been running these tours every summer for twelve years and the people booking with us in 2026 are mostly the friends and families of people who came in 2024 and 2023.
Taking deposits would mean extra admin, payment processor fees, refund disputes, and a layer of distrust between us and the guest. Not taking deposits means I keep the office team focused on what they’re actually good at — answering WhatsApp messages, building good packages, and getting drivers to the right hotels on time. Guests pay the driver in cash on the morning of the tour. If they need to cancel before that, they cancel. Because nothing was paid, there’s nothing to refund. It’s the simplest model in the business and it has worked every season for twelve years.
The team
There are twenty of us in the office and on the road for the daily tours. Eight in the office — booking, customer service, scheduling, WhatsApp support — open seven days a week through the season. Twelve guides on the road, all Ministry of Tourism licensed, all English-speaking, several also fluent in Russian and German.
Beyond the daily tour team, the VIP transfer division has forty-five drivers running airport runs, private transfers along the coast, and bespoke day tours. They cover Dalaman Airport (our main inbound airport, ninety minutes east), Bodrum Airport, and the coastal road as far as Fethiye in one direction and Datça in the other.
I speak English and Turkish. Most of the office team is bilingual at minimum. For Russian-speaking and German-speaking guests we have dedicated staff. About 90% of our guests are from the United Kingdom — Marmaris is one of the most popular British destinations on the Turkish coast — and most of our day-to-day work is in English.
Our numbers, honestly
We host roughly 10,000 guests a year across all our tours and excursions. 90% from the UK, with smaller numbers from Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia and the Gulf states. The season runs April to end of October; peak months are July and August; the quieter shoulder months — April, May, September, October — are when most of our return customers come back.
We don’t publish review aggregator scores on this page because, frankly, the systems are gameable and I’d rather guests judge us by walking into the office, messaging us on WhatsApp, or going on the first tour. If you’ve booked with us before, you already know how this works. If you haven’t, the easiest test is to send a message and see how long it takes to get a real answer.
What we promise
Two things, and we keep them both:
The price you see is the price you pay. All prices fixed in pounds sterling for the full season. No card pre-authorisation, no booking fee, no surprise transfer charge, no currency conversion margin at the gate. The number on the website is the number you hand to the driver on the morning.
A real person answers when something goes wrong. WhatsApp +90 531 765 93 20 is monitored every day through the season, and during peak hours by more than one team member. If your pickup is late, if your hotel changed your room and the driver can’t find you, if it rained and your boat was cancelled — message us. Someone will answer within minutes, not days. This is the part we’re most proud of, and it’s the part most guests don’t fully appreciate until something actually goes wrong.
Get in touch
Walk in: Kemal Seyfettin Elgin Bulvarı, central Marmaris. Open every day through season.
WhatsApp: +90 531 765 9320 — English, fastest reply.
Email: info@marmaristour.com
Book online: Browse our full list of tours, select dates, get email confirmation immediately and a WhatsApp follow-up within the hour.
We’ve been here since 2014. We’ll be here next season too.