DESTINATION · DALAMAN
Dalaman is an airport
Nobody stays in Dalaman. It is the runway that serves eighty miles of the Lycian coast — Fethiye, Ölüdeniz, Kalkan, Kaş — and choosing between those is the only decision that matters.
- Airport
- DLM · Türkiye
- On sale
- 6 of 12 months
- Airport spread
- £94 across 10 UK airports
Today's best fare
London Dalaman
£80 £102 −22%
Measured on a live search, refreshed hourly. Prices move — confirm on Kiwi.com.
Departure airports
£94 apart, depending where you take off
Every UK airport searched separately for this destination, cheapest first, as a return fare for one person with taxes in. Manchester to Dalaman and London to Dalaman are not the same route and we do not price them as one. Each figure is a fare of one stop at most — the same limit as the price at the top of this page — and each is that airport's own cheapest week, so the dates change from row to row. Every link opens on the dates its price was found on.
10 of 10 airports have a fare to Dalaman within one stop today. The rest either need two connections and most of a day to get there — which we will not print a price for — or did not answer the last search. London covers Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, City and Southend in one search.
The year, month by month
When Dalaman is worth the airfare
Average daytime high for each month. The greyed months are ones we refuse to advertise — not because they are cheap, but because the place cannot deliver what the page promises.
- Jan 15° not sold
- Feb 15° not sold
- Mar 17° not sold
- Apr 21° not sold
- May 25°
- Jun 29°
- Jul 32°
- Aug 32°
- Sep 29° today's fare
- Oct 25°
- Nov 20° not sold
- Dec 16° not sold
6 of 12 months on sale. The reason is below, not in the numbers.
This is a proper Mediterranean climate with a proper winter, and the difference between here and the Canaries is the whole point. The Taurus mountains behind the coast trap Atlantic weather systems that track across the Mediterranean, and the wet half of the year is genuinely wet — this is one of the rainier stretches of the Turkish coast, not a place that merely cools down. The sea, being enclosed and shallow along the bays, holds its warmth well into the autumn and takes a long time to recover afterwards.
What actually closes the season is not the temperature but the economics. The resorts here are built almost entirely for visitors, so when the charter flights stop, the hotels, the boat operators, the paragliding schools and most of the restaurants stop with them. Hisarönü and Ovacık in particular become rows of shuttered frontages. Fethiye itself is a real town of a hundred thousand people and keeps working year round, which makes it the only base here that is not seasonal.
For a British calendar the season runs from spring through to late autumn, and the value sits at both ends of it. The shoulders give you the ruins and the Lycian Way at a walkable temperature, the sea still swimmable at the back end, and prices well below the school holidays. High summer is when the coast is busiest, hottest and dearest, and when walking anything inland stops being pleasant.
Check your resort is open before you book the fare
Outside the season a cheap flight can land you beside a shuttered strip. Fethiye works year round; Ölüdeniz and Hisarönü largely do not.
The case for it
Why Dalaman
The fare says Dalaman because that is where the aircraft lands, and the town itself is a fertile plain with a river, an airport and very little else. What the airport opens is the Teke peninsula: a stretch of Mediterranean coast where the Taurus mountains come down to the water so steeply that the road spends its time climbing, and where the settlements are strung along bays rather than laid out on a shore.
This is also the most archaeologically dense coastline in the country. Lycia was a federation of city-states with its own language and its own architecture, and the tombs are cut into cliffs above towns people still live in — the rock tombs at Fethiye sit directly over the harbour. The Lycian Way, the first long-distance path marked in Türkiye, runs five hundred kilometres through it, and you can pick up a signposted section from almost any resort.
The catch is that this coast has a real off season and it is longer than people expect. The resorts are seasonal in the fullest sense: hotels shut, boat operators stop, the paragliding closes and whole strips of Hisarönü become shuttered frontage. A cheap fare into a closed resort is the worst kind of bargain, and it is the reason this destination disappears from our board for half the year rather than being sold at a discount.
On the ground
Five things worth doing
- 01
Fly off Babadağ
A tandem paraglider launches from about 1,700 metres on the mountain behind Ölüdeniz and lands on the beach, and it is among the most reliable flying sites in Europe. Expect roughly £120 to £160 depending on flight length, usually including transfer and the video. Book through your hotel or a shopfront with a Turkish civil aviation licence displayed rather than off the beach; the fatality record here is low but the sport is unforgiving of unlicensed operators. Morning flights are smoother; afternoon thermals make it a rougher ride.
- 02
Get to the Blue Lagoon before the coaches
Ölüdeniz means dead sea, and the name is about the water rather than anything else: the lagoon is a sheltered inlet behind a spit where the sea barely moves. It is a protected nature park and entry costs 100 lira (about £1.70) plus a small parking charge. By eleven the sand strip is full and the paragliders are landing every ninety seconds. The open beach outside the lagoon is free, longer and pebbly, and most people prefer the lagoon precisely because it is calm enough to swim in without thinking.
- 03
Wade Saklıkent gorge
An eighteen-kilometre canyon cut through the Akdağ mountains, of which the first stretch is walkable — a wooden boardwalk pinned to the rock, then a river crossing you do on foot in water that comes off snowmelt and is genuinely cold. Entry is 65 lira (about £1.10). Take shoes you can soak; the rented plastic ones tear on the rocks. It opens for the warm half of the year only, and the water level decides how far up you get, so ask at the gate rather than at your hotel.
- 04
Take a boat to Butterfly Valley
A steep-sided cove reachable only by sea or by a scramble that has killed people, with a waterfall at the back and a colony of Jersey tiger moths in season. Day boats from Ölüdeniz run about £25 to £30 including lunch and usually take in three or four other bays. Go on a smaller boat rather than one of the big multi-deck ones: the coves are shallow, and the large boats anchor further out and give you twenty minutes ashore instead of an hour.
- 05
Walk a section of the Lycian Way
Five hundred and forty kilometres from Fethiye to Antalya, waymarked in red and white, and free. You do not need to walk it — the point is that any resort here has a signposted section starting near it. The stretch from Ölüdeniz up to Kirme and Faralya is the classic half-day, climbing out of the bay with the lagoon below you. Carry more water than seems necessary and start early; there is very little shade and the path surface is loose limestone rather than trail.
After the flight
What it costs once you land
Resort prices along this coast, which run well above inland Türkiye and are quoted to visitors in euros as often as in lira. Turkish inflation moves these figures faster than anywhere else on this list — treat them as a shape, not a quote.
- Beer, local bar £2.60 an Efes; beachfront bars in Ölüdeniz roughly double it
- Dinner for two, mid-range £30 mezze and grilled fish away from the promenade
- Dalaman airport to Fethiye £35 private car; the shared shuttle is about £14 a head
- Car hire, per day £28 worth it for Kaş and the ruins; the coast road is slow and bendy
- Sunbed and parasol £6 per set on Ölüdeniz beach
- Gözleme and çay £3
Checked August 2026. Sources at the foot of this page.
Before you book
Practical, for a British passport
Entry rules are for a British Citizen passport holder and come from gov.uk, read on 2026-08-07. They change; check before you fly.
- Airport
- DLM, Dalaman. Forty minutes to Fethiye, an hour to Ölüdeniz, two hours to Kalkan and nearly three to Kaş — which is the single most useful fact on this page. A resort transfer is not a short hop here, and the far end of the coast is a long tired drive after a late flight.
- Entry
- No visa. No fee. Up to 90 days in any 180-day period. Expiry at least 150 days after the date you arrive, and at least one blank page. The 150-day rule is the trap. It is neither the three months most of Europe asks for nor the six months most of the long-haul list asks for, and a passport with four months left will be turned away at check-in. The e-visa British travellers used to buy has not been needed since 2024.
- Currency
- Turkish lira. Cards work in hotels, restaurants and larger shops; markets, dolmuş minibuses and beach kiosks want cash. Change money at a döviz office in town rather than at the airport, where the spread is punishing, and expect prices in tourist areas to be quoted in euros or sterling.
- Language
- Turkish. English is spoken throughout the resorts to a high standard — this coast has been receiving British holidaymakers for forty years — and thins quickly once you drive inland.
- Time zone
- Türkiye keeps UTC+3 all year and does not change its clocks. That is two hours ahead of Britain in summer and three in winter, so the gap moves when the UK does, not when Türkiye does.
- Plugs
- Type C and F, 230V. A British type-G plug does not fit; bring an adapter, and note that older resort rooms often have very few sockets.
- Health
- The GHIC is worthless here — Türkiye is outside the EU — and private insurance is essential, with the paragliding and boat trips declared if you intend to do them. Private hospitals in Fethiye are good and expect payment or an insurer's guarantee up front. Drink bottled water; it is sold everywhere for pennies.
- Safety
- The FCDO advises against all but essential travel to parts of Türkiye near the Syrian border — nowhere near this coast, but worth knowing the warning exists and what it covers. Locally the risks are sun, unlicensed boat operators and the scramble down to Butterfly Valley, which is not a path and has killed walkers.
A bed
Where to stay in Dalaman
Three quite different bases, and the drive between the nearest and the furthest is over two hours. Pick the one that matches how much you intend to move about.
Fethiye
A working harbour town rather than a resort, with a fish market where you buy the fish and hand it to a restaurant to cook, Lycian rock tombs above the streets and the widest choice of beds on this coast. Forty minutes from the airport and the base with the best transport links. The beach is at Çalış, a bus ride away, so this is the choice for people who want a town rather than sand outside the door.
Stays in Fethiye Opens in a new tab THE POSTCARDÖlüdeniz
The lagoon, the paragliding landing zone and a compact strip of hotels behind it. Beautiful, and busy in proportion — this is the image that sells the coast and everyone has seen it. Fully seasonal, so check dates before booking. The nightlife is up the hill in Hisarönü rather than here, which suits some people exactly and others not at all.
Stays in Ölüdeniz Opens in a new tab QUIETER AND SMARTERKalkan
Two hours east, a whitewashed hillside town of boutique hotels and villas above a small harbour, with a long-established British following and prices to match. The steep streets are punishing in the heat and there is no real beach — swimming is off platforms and by boat. Choose it for evenings on a roof terrace rather than days on sand, and factor the transfer into the cost.
Stays in Kalkan Opens in a new tabEvery area pinned on one map, set to the dates of the fare above. Change them for your own trip and it reloads live availability.
Open the Dalaman map Opens in a new tabGetting around
The dolmuş is the thing to learn. These shared minibuses run fixed routes on no timetable — they leave when full — and they connect every resort on this coast for a pound or two. You flag one down anywhere along the route, pass your fare forward, and call out to be let off. Fethiye to Ölüdeniz runs every few minutes in season and is the cheapest transfer you will find anywhere on this list.
For anything beyond the local runs, hire a car. Kaş, Patara, Xanthos, Saklıkent and the better stretches of the Lycian Way are all a drive, and the coast road is spectacular and slow in equal measure — allow half again what a map suggests. Turkish motorway driving is fast and the mountain sections are not; the combination catches people out. An international permit is not required for a short visit on a British licence.
Airport transfers deserve thought here more than at most destinations. Dalaman to Fethiye is forty minutes but Dalaman to Kalkan is over two hours, and a private car costs roughly two and a half times the shared shuttle. If you land late and are heading east, the transfer is a significant part of the trip rather than an afterthought.
Food and local tips
The coast eats mezze first and everything else second. A table of small cold dishes — smoked aubergine, yoghurt with garlic, broad beans in oil, stuffed vine leaves — arrives before you have ordered anything, and it is charged for by the dish, so send back what you do not want rather than assuming it is complimentary. The grilled fish that follows is priced by weight from a chilled display, and you are entitled to see it weighed.
The best-value meal in Fethiye is the fish market: you buy from the stalls in the middle at market prices, then hand it to one of the restaurants ringing them, who cook it and serve it with bread and salad for a small fixed fee. Elsewhere, look for a lokanta — a canteen with trays of home cooking behind glass, where you point at what you want and pay a fraction of the promenade price. Alcohol is heavily taxed in Türkiye and a bottle of wine in a restaurant costs more than the meal.
Buy your own fish at Fethiye market
Pick it from the stalls, hand it to a surrounding restaurant, and pay them about 200 lira (£3.40) a head to grill it and bring bread, salad and mezze.
Ready for the Lycian coast?
Pick your departure airport and see what the route costs today from each of the ten we track.
See the £80 fare Opens in a new tabSame band
Other winter sun destinations
Where the numbers came from
- Ölüdeniz paragliding prices fethiyeyamacparasutun.com Opens in a new tab read 2026-08-07
- Saklıkent gorge entry and Butterfly Valley boat prices chillaxtravel.com Opens in a new tab read 2026-08-07
- Dalaman airport transfer costs welcomepickups.com Opens in a new tab read 2026-08-07
- Entry rules for a British Citizen passport gov.ukOpens in a new tab read 2026-08-07