Holiday Inn Istanbul Old City, an IHG Hotel

This hotel has many positives but a couple of bad negatives which I’ll start with for a change.

Internet - simply the worst connection I’ve ever experienced in a hotel, the internet is painfully slow when it worked and the WiFi was very flakey and pretty much non-existent at busy times. If you do get a connection there appears to be heavy throttling of connection to certain types of sites - good luck with YouTube unless you’ve paid for YouTube premium and can let it download videos over an hour or two for you to watch later.
If you want to do any work from this hotel you have absolutely no chance. I’m used to UK hotels providing unusable internet but this is the first European IHG hotel I’ve suffered with.

Paper thin walls - from my room I could hear everything from the surrounding rooms, especially the bathroom of the room next door - not ideal!

The staff are very nice, friendly and helpful and the location is perfect.
You can walk to pretty much anywhere from here or easily access the tram if that’s your preferred method.
As part of my stay I had a free upgrade to my room - hence the size in the photos/video and was able to get a late checkout which was very welcome.
I didn’t use the restaurant at all, ate out all the time and avoided breakfast as it didn’t seem value for money and there are hundreds of places to grab breakfast when out and about for a fraction of the cost.

Well, I found hair everywhere in the room and the toilet, but they upgraded my room when I reported it. The parking is not free. The services are quite nice and the WiFi is great.

I must highlight that the staff were very friendly and helpful.

However, I was really disappointed with the outside hotel picture as it does not match the photo shown in the booking. The hotel is in between other hotels and surrounded by narrow roads.

In sum, it's a 5 Star hotel, but I didn't really have the 5 Star feeling there.

Had an okay stay at this hotel during a holiday in Istanbul. The location is not bad, a few minutes walk away from a tram stop and there are restaurants and shops very close by.

The standard room was a good size, with a large comfortable bed and luggage space. Comfortable bathroom as well with a large shower. Complimentary water and tea / coffee in the room was appreciated.

There were a few negatives I had though. The water temperature in the shower was temperamental, and was barely lukewarm on 2 separate occasions. The WiFi was also extremely slow, and basically unusable for anything other than sending messages. Climate control in the room was also not very effective, with even the coldest setting being somewhat warm in the room.

Overall value for money was ok but we would probably stay somewhere else next time.