Originally Posted by
DrRodneyMcKay
I'll be flying June 14th, so can certainly report back on the experience. They gave me quite the runaround with whether I qualify for a free hotel before saying that I do. Planning to have a backup hotel just in case, preferably somewhere in Old City - if someone has recommendations, they'd be appreciated.
There's no better time to use HH points than going to Turkey. For 5000 points, at 1 cpp
Zeytinburnu Hotels - Hampton by Hilton Istanbul Zeytinburnu
Hilton has a few C1 hotels (absolutely rare these days), 1 at Zeytinburnu, usually those C1 and C2 hotels are located at the most inconvenient spots. This one is an exception, 400M (5 min walk) to Marmaray Station which you can hop on to Sulhtanamet.
If you haven't booked your ticket yet I recommend connecting overnight coming from North America and leave next morning, forget about free hotels. I did it once and immigration, waiting for hotel, traffic during evening took (1/2+1+1) almost 3 hours and had only 4 hours left in the hotel.