Good news: the situation has been rectified. J passengers now qualify for a sleeping room (aka "Private Suites") if they have a layover between 4 and 9 hours, not 4-7 hours. I was given a sleeping room for my 8 hour 45 minutes layover. There was no need for me to argue about a free hotel which I should have received based on the conditions in effect when I booked my ticket several months ago. The new airport is quite far so I can understand the increase from 7 to 9 hours minimum and I would rather have a shower in the lounge and rest in a sleeping room than go to a hotel for a short layover like I had.
I found the sleeping rooms quite nice. The soundproofing is better than in Atatürk, in part because there is carpet in the hallway and there is more insulation in the walls. We can still hear housekeeping talking at times but it is much improved from Atatürk airport. In addition there are more of those private suites than at Atatürk as you can see on the picture. All rooms on the left are sleeping rooms, while on the right it's the showers. If you draw the curtains you have the view of E gates.
Unlike in Atatürk we now get a key card to come in and out of our sleeping room as we wish. This is far more convenient. ^
Also I found the internet connection workable, much better than in the old Atatürk lounge.
Overall I was very pleased and I will not hesitate to book a flight with a long layover again since I was able to have a decent few hours of sleep in there.
This does not excuse not answering my 4 e-mails to
[email protected] about the free hotel and not answering to my "feedback form" as I was instructed to fill out on the website. In total I filled out three forms and called customer service 5 times for follow-ups once I had a case reference number; they told me that's how it needs to be done (cannot just talk to customer service without these forms). They told me it would be given high priority but the only responses I got back by e-mail were the useless "the new rule is 9 hours so no hotel for you", completely disregarding my comments about the rule in place at the time I booked my flight and the fact that I was not going to get a sleeping room in the lounge (the so called hole between 7 and 9 hours). So the end result was good, but customer service has proven to me that they are awful.