I must admit after we booked our flights I was worried about finding a decent hotel to stay in.I searched on the net and then decided to check out the ones I found using tripadvisor. After reading the horror stories about some of the hotels people had stayed at I found this one and instantly knew this was the one. When reviews mention the owners name and how good he was you know that this is a good place. Booking was effortless via email and we paid at the end not the beginning like some of the hotels. Shaban arranged our transfers as well and everything went smoothly. We will definitely book again with them.

I stayed here with my partner and mother in October 2011. We booked on booking.com (who I would also not recommend) after viewing photos and reading all the information provided.

When we arrived we were shafted (in typical Istanbul fashion). The hotel must have recently brought a new premises, next door, which they placed us into. We had a triple room - which was literally only enough for 3 single beds to fit in, and you had to shuffle around them to get to the bathroom or out the door. They were also horrible beds with tatty bedding. The entrance to the new building was like a dump with rubbish and objects with out a home everywhere. NOTHING LIKE THE PHOTOS or DESCRIPTION.

To make things worse we arranged with the hotel for a transfer in the morning for 4am, which had to be a private transfer as it was so early. We booked this with the man behind the counter who said he would be the driver... When we arrived at 4am the people at reception, they knew nothing about our booking, after calling around for 40 minutes they figured they couldn't arrange us a transfer and offered to pay for our taxi to the airport for the same price as the transfer. If it wasn't for no traffic on the road and the driver speeding we would not have made it and had to run for the check out to make it by one minute.... What's more is the taxi cost a good margin less than what the hotel charged us for the taxi..

There was one staff member who had a pony tale (male) who was good and was the only positive about the place, but certainly would not recommend this place to anyone!

A great weekend in Istanbul, we contacted Sur Hotel to look after 17 of us coming over for the Marathon weekend. The staff went out of their way to offer advice and help. The rooms were basic but clean. Location was perfect for us, The daily breakfast was very good, the staff even arranged an early 06.30 breakfast on Marathon day. Thanks for a great weekend.

We stayed two nights in Ekhim apartments and three nights in the Sur hotel, both are owned by the same group. Saban and his team are fantastic people - really nice, accommodating and you feel like you are getting genuinely good advice. We were moved from the apartment after two nights to the Sur hotel - they were apologetic about moving us and gave us the choice of another apartment or the hotel. The hotel room was a single family room, had a view and included breakfast so we took that. Mistake. We didn't notice the train tracks and the commuter trains that run by your room every 15 minutes pretty much all through the night. We could hardly sleep it was so ridiculously loud (we even posted a YouTube clip of it). So don't get a room on the water side. The street side might be better. Beds and pillows were average and e bathroom smelled over time (recurring theme in turkey) but there was hot water and everything worked. Availability was low across istanbul but we found ourselves wondering if there was better value elsewhere for 80 eur/night. We stayed because the people were nice and it was rainy - a pain to move anywhere else but it would be worth looking around.