Istanbul and the art of booking a hotel online: Nothing Zen! Part 4

Istanbul: View of the Golden Horn.
A Turk singer and three Derwish
dancers preparing for a video shoot

I just returned from a week’s trip to Istanbul with a group of 26 and a lot of information to share with you.

Trip and organization

First I would like to address the actual travel details.

We flew with KLM (a flight shared with KLM’s partner NW) directly from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport to Istanbul Attaturk Airport without any delay.The fact that KLM is now a subsidiary of Air France apparently did something good to KLM: Flying in time. Flight attendants who behave much more gracious and hospitable and even the food simple, but better than I remember from years ago, when I used to fly business class and decided not to fly KLM anymore due to exorbitant rates, very unfriendly flight attendants, and horrible food and had handed my frequent flier card in. Kudos for KLM!

The trip was partly booked through a Travel Agent No Beach. They also did a wonderful job in getting the group transferred by private couch from and to the airport, provided two nice guides fro some sightseeing, fully bilingual in Turkish and Dutch (to be more precise: one was speaking with a Flemish tongue, the Belgian version of Dutch). They organized some intermediate transport by coach and ferry to a nice restaurant at the Asian side of the Bosphorus and finally the transfer back to the airport. They made the hotel reservations solved some issues arising from an an overbooked hotel. All in all very conveniently organized. Once more the experience convinced me that for a group you should rely on an experienced travel agent and not on your own time consuming Internet rummaging and the hassle of negotiating with hotels you don’t know. Kudos for No Beach!

Hotels
As the frequent reader may remember from the two previous posts in this series, Part 1 in January and Part 2 in April, we had arrived at a shortlist of a couple of hotels:

It turned out that part of the group stayed a couple of days in Lady Diana and I would suggest that as the hotel to stay in when you like to be in the old center and in the walking vicinity of several of Istanbul’s highlights, several good restaurants and in the vicinity of a very easy cross city tram by which you can avoid the car congestions you will face when taking a taxi (apart from the fact that almost every taxi driver tries to make enormous detours to jinn up his bill).

I myself stayed in The Celal Sultan Hotel fro the whole week. The owner lives in Belgium (hence the Dutch spoken) and the hotel has being decorated by a Belgian interior decorator. This is a very nice hotel, very nice staff, good service and good amenities, a cozy lounge and two nice roof terraces with view on the Aya Sophia, but we stayed in a standard room which is more the size of a room in a Pod Hotel than of a decent hotel room, which is a bit too much if you are used to 75 sqm suites in your own hotel. Their superior rooms have the usual 4 star size and are acceptable.

The main reason for my verdict in favor of the Lady Diana is that their roof terrace is much more spacious and spectacular than that of the Celal Sultan with a far better view over the city, the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara with the possibility to have breakfast on the roof. The Celal website is the best of the three. It gives good photo impressions of its interior, but is scarce in giving rates and prices. They should upload newer photo’s of their renovated roof terraces. At least the rack rates I saw announced in the lounge of the Ceal Sultan are higher than the rack rates of the Lady Diana published on their website. As everything in Istanbul one should negotiate the best rates.

Kybele Front
The Kybele Hotel Front view with owner in red and rosa

The Kybele Hotel is just located between the two others and is also a very nice place for a drink, a lunch or a diner. It has a street terrace and a nice and cosy inner court terrace, without view, and is probably the cheapest of the three. I did not actually see their rooms, but I like the owner who decorated the hotel with thousands of small Turkish lamps (which he sells off course) and who, when we were looking at an Europa Cup football match between Istanbul’s Fenerbace and AC Milan, wore an AC Milan shirt, but was very satisfied that Fenerbace won 1-0 against AC Milan, the 2006 Europa Cup winner.

Dutch Design (20): Amstelveen: Citizen M and the Neighbourhood

Last Saturday the reverent Dutch Daily Newspaper

published a story about one of the future locations of a Citizen M Pod Hotel in Amstelveen, a suburb of, and connected with, Amsterdam. It gives more insight about the format of the Citizen M Pod Hotel concept.

It appears that the neighborhood, a middle to up class residential area, is contending the plans of Citizen M in court, as the building permit has been granted.

  • First there is an office building that has to be demolished to make place for the new hotel. I would say the building is not that disgusting, that it has to be demolished.
Citizen M Amstelveen
The building that will be demolished
Photo Maurice Boyer
  • They don’t like the design of the new building as it is not consistent with the architecture of the neighborhood. This is off course a very difficult discussion about “taste”
Citizen M Amstelveen Plan
  • Then they don’t like that the hotel will be located in a residential area. They fear too much traffic and too much parking problems, as no specific parking space is foreseen for the Hotel. The lawyer representing Citizen M claims that the guests will mainly arrive by international air transport and by taxi. I highly doubt that to be a truthful statement.
  • They fear it to become a by the hour rendez-vous Hotel and fear an influx of cheap backpackers tourism. The last argument is unlikely as the much cheaper hostel concept specifically caters for the backpackers.
  • They fear loss of privacy as guests will be able to look in their homes from the many windows. This is a bit strange argument if one knows the very Dutch habit of not closing the curtains when the sun sets, that many of our foreign guests find a rather peculiar typical Dutch habit.

It seems to take some time before the building permit will be finally granted….

The Private Islands Blog

Private Islands Blog Banner

Note: I have reworked this post entirely on December 30, 2009.

Sometimes I get requests to pay attention to this or to that. Sometimes I honor those requests, sometimes I definitely won’t honor them and sometimes I forget them.

Some time ago someone (I’ll refer to him further as Mr X) asked me to give his Blog some attention. I forgot, but recently remembered that there was a rumor that a real online casino would be established on the (in)famous Principality of Sealand about which Island Mr X had written once in one of his posts on his blog, as I did myself in February, which rumor seems a recurring rumor…without becoming true.

Added September 25, 2007:

According to the first commenter to this post, there is somebody out there who claims Mr X to be a fraud. I really don’t know and don’t want to get involved in a feud. I don’t know who to believe. The commenter doesn’t give away a lot of information about her/himself. So be careful who to believe! This is especially the case as there is another Private Islands Blog Out there: The Official Private Islands Blog.
Again: Who to believe?

Added December 30, 2009
Mr X commented somewhere here on the blog on December 18, 2009 out of the blue:

Dear Sir, the following page has numerous highly libelous links attacking me, can you please delete the page?

The Private Islands Blog

and gave his name telephone number and e-mail address.

[ there were two spelling errors in his comment that I redressed here. Because of the highly personal information I’ve deleted the comment ]

My reaction was this:

Mr X
I don’t agree that the post is libelous it self.
I’m not here to attack you.
Therefore I’ll make the post private.

And you know what? The original link he gave me is now a dead blog anyway….

But after making this post privat, I got 404 errors when people were trying to reach this post.

I now have published the Rules of Engagement to make more clear what I want and don’t want here.

Thereafter I have reworked this post and made it public again to make it visible for everyone ….and deleted the comment with the links that mr X may or may not find libelous. Again I don’t want to get involved.

Hospitality and Travel Bloggers Community: T-Listers and L-Listers Unite!

WiWiH Hospitality and Travel Bloggers Community

After my July review of the current situation in T-List and L-List Blogland (T-List and L-List: The Next Step: Community Building), I noted the following developments:

  • Albert Barra has created an English language channel on his Spanish Blog (pff I lost the link but here it is: Travel Web Cafe)
  • I found myself temporarily booted from Facebook
  • I looked further into WiWiH and found out that already 19 T-Listers are a member of WiWiH (see Happy Hotelier on WiWiH )
  • Travolution Blog tried to separate the dogs from the sheep in their post The Recommended
  • There will be a e-connect conference in Vancouver
  • The conference will be covered with a book with T-List tips

Probably I missed a few.

Because I felt uncomfortable with some solutions or felt they were not working as they should and because I felt comfortable within WiWiH and with some of their forums I participate in, I asked the WiWiH people if they would be willing to host a Hospitality and Travel Bloggers Community.

They gracefully honored the request.

Invitation for You!

So I am proud to invite all professional Hospitality and Travel Bloggers to join WiWiH | Hospitality and Travel Community. If you are a WiWiH member already just knock to get in, otherwise register free at WiWiH and then knock to get in.

Hope to see you there!

Dutch Design (19): Third Pod Hotel Concept for Amsterdam Revealed: CitizenM

Early 2008 will see a third (the others being the Qbic and the Yotel) Pod Hotel, CitizenM Hotels, opening at the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.

CitizenM Schiphol Airport Amsterdam

The 230 rooms (pods?) counting hotel is presently under construction.

Under the “Affordable Luxury” slogan:

CitizenM has partnered with internationally renowned architects Concrete, and European design giants Philips and Vitra to offer “affordable luxury for the people.” Rooms are friendly and functional and feature: a super king-size bed fitted with luxurious linen and pillows, a wall-to-wall window for plenty of natural light, a flat LCD television, Philips technology and ambient lighting, a rain shower and other luxurious amenities especially developed by a famous ‘nose’ (also responsible for creations of Commes des Garcons and Viktor and Rolf).

Citizen M Room

Inspired by accommodations on luxury yachts and private jets, citizenM built its own factory in order to realize its high quality hotel rooms. In its vision, no detail was left ignored: each room is 14 square meters – each of which has been carefully thought through to offer the height of functional design.

Their website is full of information. It even has a community building module. I would say this an industry example of how to announce your concept and/or hotel opening.

The one Amsterdam Schiphol Airport Hotel will be the first of many CitizenM hotels if they succeed tol roll out the concept as shown on this map of their plans:

CitizenM Map

The founders and executives of CitizenM are innovative visionaries, who have taken their well-rounded experience into realising CitizenM hotels. They are: Rattan Chadha (founder and former CEO of Mexx, director and partner of Oberoi Hotels & Resorts), Jan Wulf van Alkemade (hotel specialist), Tom Bas (former member of the board of directors of NH Hotels and Golden Tulip) and Michael Levie (former Executive and VP of Operations of various international hotel chains: Sonesta and NH Hotels). These are names to reckon with.

Here is the Video:

Blogged in the City is a Dutch language Blog about Hotels and E-commerce by Thomas Dieben who has a hotel background and is an E-commerce consultant who first picked up this news.

In the CitizenM Press release there is more information.