Turkey is on everyone’s holiday radar right now because it’s one of the few destinations where a pound might just buy more than a chip wrapper this summer.

At least, that’s how most Brits are viewing the country. Turkey’s tourism chiefs see things somewhat differently. They are busy transforming a section of its southern seaboard into a European Dubai.

The object of their attentions is Antalya — an hour’s plane ride from Istanbul, down on a ragged cliff edge of the Mediterranean and piled high with the sort of bleak tower blocks that we spent the 1960s building and the 1980s bulldozing.

Granted, not the most promising launch pad for a razzmatazz resort, but then you need bifocal beer goggles to declare most of Dubai pretty, too. And Antalya is already home to several hotels that seem to rely more on steroids than star ratings.

Stay at the Kremlin - in Turkey

Why get cold in Moscow when there's a replica Kremlin hotel in the busy resort of Antalya? Stefanie Marsh checks in

• Green Spaces: Dalyan, Turkey

• Holiday in the Turkish hills

Related Internet Links

• More than 100 travel articles about Turkey

There’s the Marmara, the world’s first revolving hotel; the Kremlin Palace, a lifesize replica of the Russian seat of government; and, in nearby Belek, the Adam & Eve, which claims to be the world’s sexiest hotel.

So far, so far out, but Antalya comes of high-kicking age (or toe-curling, depending on your disposition) in June, with the unveiling of the Mardan Palace. It will be Europe’s most expensive hotel, a billion-dollar baby (well, $1.4 billion, to be precise).

From the outside, it looks like Soviet Barbie’s wedding cake, with endless layers of white and gold. Inside, that Midas touch means more than 10,000 square metres of gold leaf, aided and abetted by 500,000 crystals and 23,000 square metres of Italian marble.

The pool is one of the largest in the Med: five acres of fresh water with a sunken aquarium stocked with 2,400 fish as its centrepiece. It is spanned by bridges based on designs by Leonardo da Vinci and has gondolas to take guests from one end to the other, a trip that takes half an hour (though the boats do move slowly).

There are musicians to serenade spa-goers into the traditional Turkish hammam, and in the waterside Italian restaurant, your little darling will be banging his spoon against a pasta bowl from a service by Hermès that cost £1.35m. In short, the owner will be absolutely furious if he hasn’t spent as much money as is humanly possible.

He being first-time hotelier Telman Ismailov, president of the Russian group AST, and a man not known to stint. In 2006, he reportedly paid Jennifer Lopez £1m to sing Happy Birthday to him at a party for his 50th. Ismailov pointed his private jet (naturally, it’s painted gold) in the direction of Antalya to holiday so often that his butler remarked it would make better financial sense to build rather than continue renting villas. He might have been right if Ismailov had restricted himself to, say, five or six bedrooms instead of 560.

But the gondoliers? The crystals? The gold? It all sounds incredibly tacky, doesn’t it? Some of it is. The laser shows and fountain displays are very Vegas, the pole-dancing platforms in its three-storey nightclub may prove a tad too Moscow for most, and the private spa suite, which is accessed through a water­fall and costs £1,500 an hour to rent, has a hideous champagne bar that is 100% cupid corny.

Other aspects are downright offensive: the fur coats in its version of Istanbul’s famous Grand Bazaar; the toothless sharks in its swim reef; and the 9,000 tons of sand dredged from Egypt to ensure the private beach is silky soft.

Times recommends

• Dubai cheaper than Doncaster as room rates tumble
• World Cup 2010 - how to follow England
• Copenhagen: Europe's greenest city