I read each review for the Tomtom Suites before booking this hotel for our Istanbul vacation, and I can assure you that all of the wonderful things you read are true. It is a beautiful hotel, with an excellent staff that goes above and beyond to provide you with the highest level of service. I would like to say that ALL of the staff is first rate before I move on to my next comments.
Everyone mentions Nural, and it's for good reason. We started our contact with Nural from NYC, and he was always very responsive and helpful with everything from restaurant reservations we could not secure by email, recommendations for other great restaurants, having our fast pass museums cards and transportation card ready at the hotel, and securing a private all day guide for us at a reasonable rate for our first whole day. These are the things he did before our arrival, which made us feel more at ease. I was kind of surprised to read from a previous reviewer that they were not a fan of his hand drawn maps. I have included an image of one of these maps he drew for us that included boat schedules, and lots of detail that would be easy to show to pretty much any local on the street or in a shop, should we get turned around. If you take a look at the map image I posted,...I read each review for the Tomtom Suites before booking this hotel for our Istanbul vacation, and I can assure you that all of the wonderful things you read are true. It is a beautiful hotel, with an excellent staff that goes above and beyond to provide you with the highest level of service. I would like to say that ALL of the staff is first rate before I move on to my next comments.
Everyone mentions Nural, and it's for good reason. We started our contact with Nural from NYC, and he was always very responsive and helpful with everything from restaurant reservations we could not secure by email, recommendations for other great restaurants, having our fast pass museums cards and transportation card ready at the hotel, and securing a private all day guide for us at a reasonable rate for our first whole day. These are the things he did before our arrival, which made us feel more at ease. I was kind of surprised to read from a previous reviewer that they were not a fan of his hand drawn maps. I have included an image of one of these maps he drew for us that included boat schedules, and lots of detail that would be easy to show to pretty much any local on the street or in a shop, should we get turned around. If you take a look at the map image I posted, you will see that it is for our specific plans for the evening, and is pretty fool proof. I found Nural's maps not only helpful, but very unique and charming. Should you wish, the hotel also has many different traditional tourist maps and they are always eager to give you as much help and information as you require. In addition to an excellent front desk staff, the wait staff at Nicole, the behind the scene staff, and the housekeeping staff are all top notch. We tend to be tippers, and I am sure that helps, but there is a truly genuine feeling from the staff at Tomtom, we were very impressed overall.
We stayed in room 22 and we loved it. It is spacious, with plenty of wardrobe space to put things properly away to feel more settled, and a large, luxe, marble bathroom with good water pressure. The bed is very comfortable, the linens and towels are plentiful and of high quality, there is a good size mini-fridge that has a lot of purchase options and plenty of extra space to put your own things in as well. They provide you with two bottles of fresh water each day and turndown service chocolates; requests for things like ice (an always must have for us) or a pot of coffee were handled quickly, which we appreciated. I have no complaints at all, but, if I could improve on things, I would have liked to have had a more traditional hotel blackout option on the window treatments (we tend to be night people) and as someone else mentioned, the lighting in the bathroom is not great, especially for women. Very tall ceilings with overhead spotlights tend to cast a lot of shadows from above, making putting on makeup challenging. They do have a makeup mirror, but it's rather useless, it lights up fluorescent purple, which I did not understand at all? I ended up just using the full length mirrors on the wardrobe to apply makeup by daylight, and it was totally fine. We loved our room, and would choose it again.
While we stayed at Tomtom nine nights, we only took advantage of the complimentary breakfast a few times... night people, dreaming of blackout shades! When we did have it, we liked it a lot. What's not to like, I am surprised that some people are not satisfied? The view is second to none, and there are many options of fruits, breads, prepared dishes, cheeses, nuts, various meats, smoked salmon, house made yogurt, cereals, made to order eggs, fresh juice, french press coffee... we found it well above many breakfast experiences around the globe, and the staff is wonderful.
The location of the hotel is as you have read here in previous reviews. It is a great, quiet place that is kind of in the middle of everything, but still feels remote and luxurious. There is some construction on the private street by the hotel, but it never bothered us, living in Manhattan, construction is just a given, and taxis totally can pull right up to the front door... not sure why a previous reviewer said that was not the case? The shortcut to the shopping street is a pretty steep climb and on a back alleyway, but for us, it was also fine. My biggest concern about it was not the incline, but there was quite a bit of broken glass, which is not the fault of the Tomtom, as there are residents on that street and a business or two. I was wearing flip-flops a lot of the time and never got cut, but I was always looking down, just FYI. It is a San Francisco kind of climb, but it just takes a couple of minutes. Alternatively, there are other routes to take you where you need to go that don't add much time to your commute.
My final thoughts are this: Stay here, you will not regret it! Make use of the excellent staff, they are eager to help you! I'd be writing for days if I were to mention every thing wonderful about Tomtom and our experience, we would not hesitate to stay here again.More
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