Originally Posted by PhoenixCMC

I was there for two nights in late May of this year. The section that used to be the lobby has been taken over by an unaffiliated restaurant, so you enter into a hallway on the side of the hotel that leads, in one direction, to a check-in desk and -- beyond that to a restaurant/bar/seating area where breakfast is served. If you go straight when you enter, you go the the stairway/elevator to the rooms. As far as I can tell, the hotel is the same as it was when I stayed there previously in Sept 2011 and Apr 2012.

The rooms are fine, although a little dark for my taste, but it's the closest Starwood property (other than the new St. Regis) to the center of the new city. I like the location a lot as there is a good local shopping/eating area a hundred meters or so away, that is frequented by more locals that tourists and it is a very short walk to the Besiktas ferry terminal. If you like to walk, you can get all over the new city within 20-30 minutes and not much more to Sultanamet (a lot of folks would not want to walk that far, but you can take the ferry too).