On 7 December 2007, I booked a promotional rate, 4 night stay in a Deluxe room at the five star rated Eresin Crown Hotel in Sultanahmet. On 16 March 2008 I received a confirmation from the Erisin Hotel website stating " We look forward to serving you during your upcoming stay at the Eresin Crown Hotel. If we can be of further assistance, please do not hesitate to reply to this e-mail or contact us". I read the email and then closed the email, everything appeared normal. My wife and I arrived at the hotel on Good Friday 21 March at 18.00pm and showed the gentleman at reception our booking confimation. The gentleman called the Hotel Division Manager and she said "Sorry you have cancelled your reservation in our reservation system and we are now fully booked". After fifteen minutes she offered us only one night stay in a Suite and the hotel would pay for a taxi to transfer us to their sister hotel "The Taxsim Premier Hotel" and they offered us a suite for three nights. I checked the web and all the other hotels in Sultanahmet were full so we had no choice but to accept the offer to be transferred to Taxsim. The hotel manager could not produce an email sent from me to prove I had cancelled the reservation. She did, however produced a copy of the cancellation sent to my email, dated 21 March at 17.35pm. i.e. 25 mins before we arrived at the hotel! Why on earth would I cancel my booking and then fly to Istanbul to check-in to the hotel. My advise to other travellers is to contact hotels in advance and confirm your bookings, even if you have a web confirmation. I did not cancel my booking and I was deeply appalled that the hotel sent a letter to our Suite which said "In reference to the cancellation situation discussed with you earlier - we regret to advise that the reservation was in fact cancelled at your end. I have attached a copy of the email sent from our system to you in response to the cancellation.....Kind Regards, Hotel Division Manager". The Suite at the Eresin was located at the front of the hotel and we could hear everything, including traffic, loud music and people talking in other rooms. Overall this is not the service I expect from a hotel with a five star rating. The sister hotel was only rated four stars and was located 20 minutes from the historic old town where we had looked forward to staying. I can only assume that when the hotel reservation system indicated to the hotel management that the hotel was fully booked they started sending out automatic cancellations to customers due to check-in later in the day.

Stayed at this hotel with my girlfriend to celebrate our anniversary. I had booked a dinner and asked for roses to be delivered. Not only did we get these done, we also got a personal letter from the manager and hand made chocolates – very impressive! The lobby is unusual in the sense that you feel as though you’re in a museum rather than a hotel and the staff float around quietly.. The food was good– the chef came out to ask us how our food was hence we made our comments directly to the person who whipped up breakfast for us.

The hotel is ideal if you want to be in a relaxed quiet surrounding with history literally in your room! The English spoken by staff is surprisingly good (in comparison to other places ive stayed in ) and the atmosphere is simply - NİCE - classy hotel - must go up to the terrace – we couldn’t have breakfast there as it was cold but we took some fab photos.

The lobby of the hotelwas welcoming and had a lovely feel to it.The hotel has some ruins from the Byzantine period in its atrium.The staff were very pleasant and helpful.We stayed for one night in March.The location was great.
Our room was lovely but too warm.We tried to turn on the AC..nothing.When we enquired about this at reception,we were told that the system had not been turned on in the hotel. Nothing could be done about this.As a result of this I got little sleep and had to open the window and was kept awake by the outside noise.I was disappointed with this.
The breakfast was fantastic .

Went to Istanbul for a long weekend.
Location of the hotel is perfect, service is nice and helpful, they do speak English well.
Highly recommended, if I travel to Istanbul again I'll stay at the same hotel.