Too Much Water in Your Chart? This Hotel Suggests a Hike

Before Sarah Barnes checked in at Perdue, a hotel on Türkiye’s southwestern coast, she went to a tent of billowing white drapes above the sea. Over a glass of Turkish tea, the resident astrologer, Seda, asked for her name, date and place of birth. The reading that followed put Barnes at 60 per cent water and 26 per cent air, with just 6.7 per cent each of fire and earth. The advice came straight from those numbers: look for adventure on land, and take up practical and artistic activities to build up the missing elements.

The package is called Stay Written in the Stars, and it comes from Soulsetters, the boutique hospitality group behind Perdue. As Marie Claire UK described it in August, guests hand over their birth date, time and place on arrival; the astrologer reads the chart and recommends an itinerary. That might mean yoga above the sea, a stretch of the Lycian Way, art therapy, Turkish carpet weaving or a film under the night sky. None of it is compulsory. Citizen Femme, a UK lifestyle site, put the price at €80 per person for a 50-minute reading, on top of rooms from £268 a night.

Seda also told Barnes that she loved writing and could never leave a question alone, a trait Barnes, who writes for a living, recognised as an occupational habit. They finished by drawing three angel cards. Seda’s parting advice was to use her Scorpio energy while living like a Libra, and she added that Barnes had been a Taurus in a past life, because her mother is one.

Over the following days Barnes did cliffside yoga and walked part of the Lycian Way. On Seda’s recommendation she joined an art therapy class, washing stones from the area and painting them in bright colours, and she learned dastar weaving, a traditional technique that twists cotton yarn on wooden looms.

Mischa Anouk Smith of Marie Claire got a different prescription. Her reading focused on the Leo in her chart, which apparently wanted more room: more movement, more energy spent, an active start to each day. Smith admits that language got in the way a little, and her own verdict is disarmingly plain. The stars were not really forecasting anything, she wrote; “mainly they were saying to get out of bed and have more fun.”

Put the two accounts side by side and the astrology is doing a practical job. The yoga, walks, art classes and outdoor cinema are things the hotel already offers. The reading picks a few of them and attaches a reason to each: too much water, go walking; a Leo who needs an outlet, exercise before breakfast. Marie Claire’s pitch was that guests can skip weeks of research and saved TikToks and leave the choice to the universe. For the hotel, it is a separately priced 50-minute conversation that ends with a guest’s days filled from its own programme.

Perdue itself says very little about the service. The wellbeing section of its Turkish-language site invites guests who want to explore their own elements and cosmic energies to take an inner journey in its astrology sessions. Further down the page, the card headed “Astroloji” still carries placeholder Lorem ipsum text. The idea is not new, either. In a May 2024 introduction, Soulsetters wrote about guests building an itinerary from their star charts with Perdue’s resident expert, whom the text calls an astronomer.

The biggest event of Smith’s trip was not in her chart. Drew, her partner of ten years, had planned to propose on a sunset cruise; he did it instead in Perdue’s private dining area, carved into the cliff. In Smith’s telling, it was the one big thing the stars had not seen coming.