Forget faceless chains and local fleapits, the new generation of hotels on the Bosphorus are both sexy and accessible, says Nick Redman.
Want to appreciate the very best in new Istanbul business hotels? You’d better get your trainers on and head up to the top floor of Witt Istanbul Suites, which opened to gasps last March in the well-heeled Cihangir district. The non-chain, non-banded property is diminutive, discreet and designer without being garishly so: a quiet accommodation revolution for the city where Europe touches Asia.
It’s the rooftop gym, however, that steals the show: a glass cube with a perfectly angled position, it delivers some of the most outstanding views of the Istanbul skyline, as you jog off last night’s doner kebab dinner. The city’s iconic landmarks – the Blue Mosque, the Haghia Sofia and Topkapi Palace – are laid out along the Byzantine Peninsula, like a living picture postcard; in the foreground, the waters of the Golden Horn flow glitteringly into the Bosphorus strait, as ferries ply back and forth, and countless minarets spear the horizon all around. Eureka! We have it: a sexy, world-class, utterly 21st-century Istanbul hotel that synthesises cleanly with its classic Islamic setting.
It represents a shake-up in more ways. Grant Thatcher, publisher of Luxe City Guides, says: “With the advent of Blackberry, in-room wifi, broadband and fax, business travellers are increasingly looking towards short-let serviced apartments and aparthotels. Instead of the faceless ‘Tuesday must be Mumbai’ hotel chain-itis of yore, executives can relax in the comfort of their own flat. It’s a psychological shift that’s so welcome when you spend a large portion of your month on the road, and Witt Istanbul Suites is a perfect example.’
Hard to believe that, less than a decade ago, you couldn’t find a sensitively created, attractive boutique or design hotel in Istanbul for love nor money. It was essentially Hobson’s Choice: a corporate-concrete high-rise full of anodyne chintz furnishings, all ghastly martinis and a cheesy pianist cantering through Fly Me To The Moon in the lobby bar; or a “characterful” indigenous address majoring in migraine-inducing carpets and generic mini-soaps in the opaque-glass shower.
Admittedly, the splendid Four Seasons Hotel Sultanahmet, which opened in 1996 in a notorious former prison, was a turning point, immediately essential on every smart traveller’s itinerary. Set in the touristic-historic quarter of Sultanahmet, however, it wasn’t exactly handy for business.
Fast-forward to 2008 and the accommodation landscape is refreshingly unrecognisable: perfectly in tune with the optimism of a city contemplating its status as European Capital of Culture for 2010. It’s a destination finally revelling in the potential of its spectacular location, where continents and cultures collide and collude.
A design-hotel watershed was the 2003 opening of the Bentley Hotel, in uptown, upmarket Nisantasi. A sleek townhouse conversion, it knew just how to marry fashionably over-sized free-standing mirrors with masculine stone-tone upholstery for the Wallpaper* generation. It was a clear blueprint for Witt Istanbul Suites, as was the soon-to-follow, business-traveller-friendly Ansen Suites, each of its 10 neat suites equipped with a home-from-home designed kitchen.
Another novelty, Ajia also proved a real head-turner when it was unveiled in 2004. It’s a compact Philippe-Starck-redux masterpiece, set in a clapboard Ottoman-era palace on the Asian shore, with private-launch connections across the waters of the Bosphorus to Europe: the ideal cocoon for the conference-room refugee desperately seeking decompression.
In 2005 came Sumahan on the Water, a similarly stylish update of a historic property slightly further north, in the fishing village of Cengelkoy. Together they suggested a city finally embracing its creative, cosmopolitan persona, looking ahead, out to seduce the thinking moneyed tourist – and the big-bucks global investor.
The city’s upswing on the international commercial stage in fewer than five years has been remarkable. “Istanbul is fast becoming one of Europe’s key strategic business hubs,” says Mike Collini, vice president of development for Northern Europe at Hilton Hotels. Emerging enterprises across Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East – from telecommunications to software, accounting to consulting, pharmaceuticals to finance – are all choosing Istanbul as their regional headquarters, not least due to its perfect geographical location.
“The amount of direct foreign investment in Turkey, which previously had never risen above US$ 3 billion annually, reached US$9.8 billion in 2005 and US$20 billion in 2006,” explains Sarhan Keyder at Intra Tours DMC. Since 1980, the company has specialised in business-travel arrangements as well as groups, conferences and incentives in Istanbul and, as Keyder points out: “It was after 2005’s boom in foreign investment that it became a real necessity to build business hotels.”
Crucial to Istanbul’s present “global limelight” status has been the explosion of the retail industry – namely a new US$500 million market for luxury brands. The Turkish Daily News recently reported on the phenomenal mushrooming of vast shopping malls in the city – among them Kanyon and Istinye Park, futuristic temples of high-end Western-aspirational goods – that have generated international conferences and fairs, themselves stimuli for hotel construction.
“In the past five years, Istanbul has experienced a tremendous boom in international profile,” says Can Goktas, director of sales and marketing at the Ritz-Carlton. “That’s down to continuing attention of the international media, and ongoing negotiations regarding EU membership. This quick change has led to the creation of new business districts, such as Levent and Maslak, and made new hotel investments in these districts essential.”
In the beautiful billionaire waterfront quarter of Bebek, on the European shore, the latest project to garner column inches is Bebekoy: a renovation of 14 historical properties, including a a 19th-century French orphanage. Conceived to comprise retail outlets, living space and hotel opportunities, it has aroused the interest of international hotel heavyweights.
Further south along the Bosphorus, in the rapidly developing area of Besiktas, a major overhaul of an old tobacco depot is taking place. The aim: to create a seven-star hotel for Istanbul, with six curious-sounding subterranean storeys. Details are emerging slowly – the project name is “Verdi Hotel Besiktas” – but it is keeping the hip-travel gossip blogs humming.
There is a growing need for quality rooms across different hotel sectors, ranging from luxury and upscale to midmarket and economy – not just in Istanbul but across Turkey. The Hilton group currently has eight hotels in Turkey and over the next five years aims to introduce more than 40 nationwide, including a range of brands currently popular in the US: Doubletree by Hilton, upscale and contemporary; Hilton Garden Inn, a mid-priced brand featuring business-traveller-friendly extras such as 24-hour business centre and ergonomic work furniture; and Hampton by Hilton, aimed firmly at the budget-conscious (“an economy hotel brand with an upper mid-scale finish” is the official blurb).
“Istanbul currently enjoys a thriving hotel scene,” says Hilton’s Mike Collini, “yet its lack of internationally branded, quality hotels, coupled with growing demand from business and leisure travellers, mean there is exciting potential for significant growth over the next few years.’
Mainstream Spanish hotel giant Barcelo is moving into Taksim, the European heart of Istanbul, as well as business district Maslak, and the developing Asian side of the city. The biggest story of this year, however, is the arrival of three world-class names, helping ratchet Istanbul up to major-league status regionally: Four Seasons, W (the luxury label by Starwood) and Park Hyatt.
With the opening of W Istanbul in April, W Hotels Worldwide made its much-trumpeted debut in Europe, and it’s a stunner, set in a redeveloped landmark in Besiktas: Akaretler Row Houses, built for workers toiling on Sultan Abdulaziz’s neo-Baroque Dolmabahce Palace in the 1870s.
W is a self-consciously trendy place; the kind that has a “Welcome Agent” instead of a receptionist, a “Welcome Ambassador” rather than a bellboy, and a “Door Ambassador” in place of – you guessed it – a doorman. In the bedroom department, there are no “standards” or “superiors”; instead spaces are “Wonderful”, “Spectacular”, “Fabulous” and “Extreme Wow”.
But it works, and is a welcome novelty for Istanbul. The five light settings in bedrooms range from “Welcome” (low) to “Sleep” (just the bedside lamps on). There’s a breezy al-fresco cocktail bar with designer rethinks on the mojito. And the presence of a moody Spice Market – an outpost of Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s hit in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District – will ensure its popularity among Paul Smith-suited work travellers as well as flocks of hair-gelled city wannabes.
This year’s other great Ottoman-era conversion is Four Seasons’ second property in the city, the eagerly awaited Four Seasons Istanbul Hotel at the Bosphorus. It can lay claim to perhaps the best location in the city, right beside the lapping strait that carves Istanbul east and west. A spreading marble terrace is set with tables for moonlit dinners, and the interiors of its 166 rooms echo the aquatic setting in shades of aqua, silver and taupe.
Cabanas lining the pool recall the indulgent lifestyle of the Sultan who summered here. There’s also a superb hammam (or Turkish bath) in the spa, where a masseur grates masochists vigorously with a loofah-glove until they’re baby-soft. “Everybody’s expecting a lot from this hotel,” the media-liaison officer assured me sombrely when I stayed in July – the week it opened. “Representatives of other hotels are sneaking in, dining, checking out the service.”
Could she have been talking about the Four Seasons’ next big competitor, the Park Hyatt Istanbul Macka Palas? After a couple of false alarms, this property was scheduled to soft-open in mid-October in the fashionable Nisantasi district. Set within a Twenties Art-Deco shell that was built to evoke the palazzi of Milan, the new Park Hyatt melds interwar glamour with contemporary sex appeal: finishes are sumptuous (walnut, for instance, and anodized bronze), and there’s a bang-up-to-the-minute steakhouse, The Prime, serving, as its name suggests, prime cuts (and seafood): simple sustenance after you’ve shopped at the onsite Gucci and Emporio Armani.
If it’s all starting to sound just a little too cookie-cutter, five-star Western, there’s good news: some bedrooms are resplendent with private Turkish baths, complete with heated slab-seat for deep-heat relaxation. A timeless treat to come home to after a hard day’s business-mongering in 21st-century, international Istanbul.
CONTACTS
HOTELS
Witt Istanbul Suites, Defterdar Yokusu 26, Cihangir; tel +90 212 393 7900; wittistanbul.com
Four Seasons Sultanahmet, Tevkifhane Sokak 1, Sultanahmet-Eminonu; tel +90 212 638 8200; fourseasons.com/istanbul
Four Seasons Hotel Istanbul at the Bosphorus, Çiragan Cad 28, Besiktas; tel +90 212 381 4000; fourseasons.com/bosphorus
Bentley Hotel, Halaskargazi Caddesi 75, Harbiye; tel +90 212 291 7730; bentley-hotel.com
Ansen Suites, Mesrutiyet Caddesi 130, Tepebasi; tel +90 212 245 8808; ansensuites.com
Ajia, Ahmet Rasim Pasa Yalisi, Cubuklu Caddesi 27, Kanlica; tel +90 216 413 9300; ajiahotel.com
Sumahan on the Water, Kuleli Caddesi 51, Cengelkoy; tel +90 216 422 8000; sumahan.com
W Istanbul, Suleyman Seba Caddesi 22, Akaretler, Besiktas; tel +90 212 381 2121; starwoodhotels.com
Park Hyatt Istanbul, Macka Palas, Bronz Sokak 35, Tesvikiye; tel +90 212 368 1234; hyatt.com
SHOPPING MALLS
Kanyon, tel +90 212 353 5300, kanyon.com.tr
Istinye Park, istinyepark.com
