UNION HOTEL KARAKOY

I recently stayed at Union Hotel Karakoy in Istanbul and had a fantastic experience. The hotel's location is ideal, offering easy access to key attractions. The rooms were not only clean but also remarkably spacious, providing a comfortable and relaxing environment. What stood out the most was the exceptionally friendly and helpful staff, who went above and beyond to ensure a delightful stay. I highly recommend Union Hotel Karakoy for a wonderful combination of prime location, cleanliness, and outstanding hospitality.

We took a room for 4 nights with a sea view, which was as expected, an impressive view of the historical city side and sea. The check-in process was quick, and staff welcomed us very professionally. Overall, it was okay but for the price we paid it was not worth it and we did have some misadventures and issues. Some of them below: 1) Noise level from street and especially from neighboring rooms (next door and above) was horrible!! You get used to the constant traffic noise from street. But noise from other rooms is not acceptable. There is no insulation at all in the walls or ceilings. You could hear anything happening around you. First night we had some people staying next door and they were talking loudly non-stop until 3am. We have called reception twice to ask them to do something about it, but nothing was done. The other nights was still a bit better, but we could still hear ‘less noisy’ neighbors. Reception did acknowledge that there is no insulation. This is unacceptable to have no insulation at all!!! 2) Second day: while we were out exploring the city, we received a message late afternoon from the hotel telling us that we needed to move rooms as there was an unexpected plumbing issue in the bathroom (pipe exploded). We replied that it is fine and will come back in the next hour to move our stuff. When we arrived, we were escorted to our room by a very unprofessional staff member (it was the first time we had seen him). He would treat us like we were kids (incredibly informal) and make very bad jokes (this for the rest of our stay). One of the jokes was even racist. But the most important thing was that when we arrived in our room, some workers were already in with doors wide open and doing their things. We had to move our stuff while people were around us, and the same unprofessional staff member from before tried to help by beginning to put everything in our bags himself. We told him many times that we prefer doing that ourselves as this is our personal belongings, but he kept being pushy and wanting to help… I had to be direct to him and tell him to let us be as this is not helping at all, but the opposite is stressing us out. Summary: Overall, it is an okay hotel. The view is great, and you get used to street noise. All the staff are friendly as well as professional (if you dont count that unprofessional staff member mentioned above). I would still not recommend that hotel at that price. You do feel a bit scammed. Also, we might have been really unlucky with the 2 points above and do feel the staff are trying their best.