Azzap Hotel Galata

The best things about the Azzap are it’s friendly and helpful reception and housekeeping staff as well as it’s ideal location. The reception area is very stylish and smells wonderful. The big disappointment was the breakfast. The main staples of a Turkish breakfast for us are yogurt and bread. The yogurt provided was Activia and the bread resembled half baked bread as sold by UK supermarkets instead of the typical Turkish yogurt available in large quantities locally and the delicious inexpensive breads sold in every Turkish bakery. The selection of fruit was very poor, pineapple and melon initially together with strawberries which were generally not good quality. Later on during our stay there was kiwi fruit and oranges which were better but compared with the selection available in the local supermarkets the fruit was very uninspiring. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect some concessions to more European tastes for breakfast but only Turkish items were offered. One of the days we stayed was a National holiday. We arrived at 9.45, breakfast finished at 10.30. There was very little left on the buffet to chose from and no further food was put out. At 10.20 I asked for some more Turkish tea but was told it was finished. I found this very difficult to believe and totally against the hospitality normally found throughout Turkey. I complained to reception. The next day the response seemed to be that everything was back to normal so that was fine. As we had paid the same price for each day of our stay we expected the same level of service each day. There were a few issues with our room. I know that we stayed for 9 nights which is unusual but there was very little space to put clothing so we ended up living out of our suitcases except for being able to hang a few items of clothing. When we arrived the safe didn’t work so housekeeping picked up the safe and carried it away (before replacing it) which was a little disconcerting. The air conditioning is centrally controlled which is unusual and not ideal, on one occasion we had to ring reception and ask for the system to be switched to cooling in the middle of the night, but generally it didn’t cause us too many problems but might on other occasions. The hotel is situated on a street which is used as a car park most of the time. I was very nervous about how this would work out when our taxi came to pick us up for the airport. In the event it was fine the hotel kept in contact with the driver and a member of the hotel staff took our cases to the taxi a few minutes walk away in the main road. I would have considered returning to this hotel again but the breakfast would put me off.