First the positives. The room was decent and neat and clean. The bathroom was also clean. The hotel is conveniently located, near the police station off istiklal street, near taksim square. The negatives:
the customer service at the hotel is very poor. On the first day of our stay, the hotel could not offer breakfast. The reason, we are having some problems in the kitchen. Ok, it can happen. But alternate arrangements can be made or some sort of compensation should have been given. There are plenty of other hotels and small restaurants, very close by. When this was pointed out, the only response was that "you can complain from where the booking was made. I did file a complaint with, but no response was received. For the next two days breakfast was offered, but only in the room and not in the restaurant. The breakfast was a fixed platter and not a buffet. It was strictly ok, but then the price of the hotel is cheap. However, a big problem is that there is no place to sit in the room. This is 1 cushion at the dresser and one plastic chair can be pulled in from the small balcony. But one would have to sit on the floor and have breakfast. On the third day of our stay, no water bottles were offered in the room. When we asked for the water, the reply was that they have run out of water and the employees who are generally responsible for getting the water bottles, forgotten. So water bottles are not available at the hotel and hence none will be offered. The hotel is 2 minutes walk from stores that have bottles of water and they could have very easily procured the same. However, the response was that we are not going to leave the hotel to buy water bottles and as it is, the water is generally offered only for 1 day. If you are staying for multiple days, we may not offer water on the subsequent days. This was a shocking response. Any further questioning about offering something as basic as a bottle of water was met with a standard reply: complain on the website from where the booking was made. The price of a 1. 5 litre bottle of water at the supermarket is about 3 lira in Istanbul. Which is about rs. 13-15. The rooms are ok for the price, but the customer service as well as the inclusions in your package like breakfast, are offered strictly on best effort basis. It doesn't matter if it is included in the price that you have paid. The staff at the reception keeps on changing everyday and there seems to be very few full time employees at the hotel. Some of the people at the reception, are better that the others.
