St. Regis Istanbul is one of the smallest hotels in the St. Regis family at only 120 rooms, but it perfectly embodies the brands "bespoke luxury" ambitions. My wife and I stayed 4 nights in late October and had a wonderful time, especially given my 144EUR BRG rate.

Check In

Arriving around midninght with a taxi from the airport (40min, 75TRY), we were warmly greeted by the doormen and led to one of the two seated reception desks. We glad accepted the offer of welcome drinks that were quickly delivered from the bar. The receptionist informed us that our SNA upgrades to a "St Regis Suite" had cleared 4 days earlier (which we knew), but that as a P100 they'd upgraded us one category further to an "Empire Suite" (which was a welcome surprise). As Platinum gift we chose the (full) breakfast at the ground floor "Brasserie" restaurant. With check-in completed a Butler escorted us to our 5th floor room.

Room

Living/Dining room w. guest restroom, seperate bedroom with bathroom and walk-in closet.

Very stylish and St. Regis'ish wood/leather decor with original art pieces.

Fresh fruit restocked every day and nuts/sweets welcome gift served in room twice.

Nice view to park across the street and sideways to the Bospherus.

Well-stocked minibar with full size bottles.

Large bathroom with tub/rainshower and large-size Remede toiletries.

Service

The personal service is where this place really shines. Since it's a comperatively small hotel, you meet the same people a lot, who always greets you warmly and go out of their way to assist you. Everybody speaks impeccable english. Housekeeping, butlerservice, reception and restaurants are all staffed with plenty of experienced and well-trained staff.

Hotel gym is a basement room with no windows, with limited, but quality Technogym equipment. If elevation training is your thing and weather allows, I'd recommend cardio training in the park across the street instead.

Dining

We had breakfast everyday at the groundfloor Brasserie. The service and quality was excellent, but the selection (buffet cold fruits, cheeses, meatcuts pastries and hot choices to order) is limited due to the comparatively small size of the hotel.

Full buffet and menu was offered for Platinum breakfast.

Breakfast hours (6:30-10:30 on weekdays) are limited and stricly adhered to, since the Brasserie converts to a lunch spot right after breakfast.

We had diner once at the top floor Spago restaurant, which is a classy place with a high-end international menu that was very tasty. It was however, a show-off place for locals socialites smoking big cigars, and we went to of the many other great and more low-key dining options in Istanbul the other nights.

Brasserie and Spago both have outdoor serving, weather permitting.

Location

St. Regis is (together with Ritz Carlton, Park Hyatt and most other luxury hotels) located in the upscale Nisantasi neighbourhood north of the classic tourist hot-spots. Taxis are cheap and plenty, and reliable public transportion is 10-15 minutes walk away (uphill Osbeyman for metro, downhill kabatas for tram/ferry and cable car across the park to Taksim). Lots of restaurants and cafes close by.

Some taxi drivers didn't know hotel name or street, but mentioning the Macka Park across the street helped even with those that spoke no english.

Uber (XL only in Istanbul) was always 2-3mins away from the hotel, and much more comfortable than regular taxi (Uber XL to airport 100 TRY).

Overall

Hotel decor, design and staff is of one of the highest standards I've experienced in any St Regis hotel. The comparatively small size makes the staff interaction much more personal, but also means that the shared functions offered (eg. reception, breakfast and gym) are smaller in size (but not in quality).

Check In

Fairly average to be honest. Arrived shortly after 10pm and the front door guys stood and watched while my driver got the luggage out of the car, then watched me struggle up the steps and of course offered to help when all the work was done.   The entrance to the hotel is actually quite narrow and often physically blocked by staff as well (I suspect for security reasons). Speaking of security unlike other hotels no bomb checks are done when driving up to the hotel, given the setup of the hotel -no separate driveway - this is understandable.  Also no metal detectors to walk through, they do have a guy with a hand wand to do checks.  I was never scanned, occasionally they walked towards me and I just gave a look along the lines of “I don’t think so” and that was that.

The main part of check in was pretty standard and I was given a surprisingly nice lemon tea.  As no suites were available for the length of my stay I was given a Grand Deluxe Room for the first night with an offer to move for the next five nights to a St Regis Suite – an offer much appreciated and accepted.   I was escorted to the room by a butler.

Hotel Exterior:

Room

Grand Deluxe:

In brief quite nice.  A good size but the layout of the room made the living area of the room feel slightly smaller than it should have.  The terrace overlooking the park was very nice and would really open up the room in the non-winter months.   Bathroom was a good size – not really much difference in size than the one in the suite.  I’ve stayed at quite a few St. Regis this year and while consistence is good I’ve found them all to be a bit same and “cookie cutter” in style – however this hotel and its rooms had its own unique feel and style which I really liked.

St Regis Suite.

Again quite nice.  Separate living area containing plenty of comfortable seating and a good sized desk. Bedroom was a good size, normal St Regis King Bed which was very comfortable.  Good size bathroom and a large separate dressing/luggage storage area. All in all a very comfortable and stylish space.   The windows were Juliette balcony style and opened up to a very nice view over the park and the Bosphorus.   

One thing I appreciated is that the hotel sells the rooms on this side of the hotel as park view – given the way most hotels try to promote themselves I have no doubt many hotels would be listing these as Bosphorus View Rooms, so full marks for a bit of honesty in marketing!  Also worth mentioning you do get a some street noise so be mindful of this.  I would also advise being wary of the city facing rooms as I think noise would be even a greater problem with these rooms.

One real annoyance and one petty annoyance. 

Real:  The living room has a massive table that is far to big for the size (in it’s far to high). It is actually a real hindrance as it is too high for the surrounding furniture to be used as a table and blocks conversation with people sitting on the other side of it.  It is a perfect size in terms of diameter to store the large floral arrangement, massive fruit plate and the half dozen bottles of water always being placed on it – it is just to high, half a meter off the height would be perfect.

Petty:  The lights/blinds/shutters controls drove me nuts.  All on or all off not a problem but different combinations were just a nightmare, not helped by the fact that some of the controllers are placed in an area that make it hard to read the controls.  Basically, dealing with a control panel with two sets of shears, two set of drapes and four separately controlled shutters was annoying.  Could really do with a tablet control system as is becoming more commonplace.

Room View:

Dressing/Walk in 

Bedroom

Lounge

Bathroom:

Service

Perfect in everyway.  Maybe my only complaint was housekeeping was too good! Any clothes left sitting anywhere in the room, even on top of my luggage, was always either neatly folded or hung up - almost felt obligied to clean up before they came in - well almost.

Dining

The various types of Platinums can have breakfast in the Brasserie as a Platinum Amenity.  After a bad experience the first morning, which I mentioned in passing to the Duty Manager when he was assisting me change rooms, service was great.  If anything it became too good but I can’t complain about that.

The spread was a typical European St Regis/LC type buffet. Not a huge selection, but what they had was of a high quality.  Eggs etc made to order.  Maybe a tad more local options would have been nice.

I also had lunch one day which was also very good.  Same staff as the morning team so they all knew me. Nothing mind blowing but a good strong bistro type meal which I quite enjoyed.  I found it much nicer than the very popular Brasserie attached to the department store up the street.  Pricing was a guess high for Istanbul but comparable to the other places around the hotel.

Also had a couple of drinks in the bar during my stay.  The bar area is actually quite small, often unstaffed and besides me I never saw another sole in there.  I think most go to the Brasserie for a drink – despite this I quite enjoyed the Bar area.  Cocktails were typical hotel pricing.

The second restaurant in the hotel is Spargo – looking at the menu nothing really excited me so didn’t try it.

One particular cold and wet night I also had room service which I was quite enjoyed.  The only thing what was a bit strange was that the items didn’t match the menu descriptions. For example I ordered lamb chops as a main and obviously I got lamb chops but the style of them didn’t match the room service menu at all.  I later noted that they were exactly the same as served in the Brassiere – so not sure if the room service menu had not been updated or when placing my order the Butler just ordered directly with the restaurant.  Either way I didn’t mind but could have been annoying for someone wanting a specific dish.

Bar:

Simple bistro fare done well:

Location

Well away from the tourist sites in the Blue Mosque area which as a return visitor was exactly what I wanted.  Have stayed at the Park Hyatt before so familiar with the area and really like it, although constantly hiking up the hilly terrain got old pretty fast.  The taxi app and an Istanbul karte made getting around a breeze.  The weather was so wet and terrible during my stay I would often quickly catch the bus up from the ferry station to the hotel instead of hiking up the steep hill back to the hotel as often I couldn’t get any takers on the taxi app for such a short trip.

Overall

One of my top 3 stays for the year - couldn't even imagine staying anywhere else in Istanbul.