Tav Airport - Kalyoncu

Highway robbery. Almost $170 USD for a standard room. We booked a room on the land side of Ataturk International airport. There's an inside the terminal hotel and an outside the airport hotel, both named TAV. Various online sources says it's a 10 minute walk once you pass custom to the land side TAV hotel. Don't believe it. Maybe if you're NOT pulling any luggage. Free hotel shuttle service. It's better to call the hotel once you've claimed your baggage. Exit the terminal. You'll see a dedicated TAV airport hotel island. One courtesy bottle of water. And a hot pot so you can boil water. Nowhere does it say faucet water is not drinkable. Unless you read the hotel binder. But the hot water pot is a definite clue. We checked in after 5pm. The hotel staff spoke fluent English. Not so much the next morning. We needed a taxi to the cruise ship terminal. Fortunately for us, the bell hop spoke fluent English. From the hotel to the terminal, it was about 76TL (approx $30 USD). I had a list of Istanbul fine dining restaurants. All were near the Bosphorus except for one. The front desk went through the entire list. The one we ended up going to was about a 10-15 minute taxi ride from the hotel. So we went and had a great Turkish dinner.

The general airport noise near the room is more then offset by the convenience factor of this hotel. Instead of heading through passport control, picking up your bags and taking a shuttle to an offsite hotel, you can transit through to this hotel without leaving the secure zone if you have a long layover, or early flight. Free wifi that works great, plugins (which are lacking in the IST airport terminal) comfy beds, cleeaannn rooms, nice carpet, sparkling tub/shower and large bathroom, and even glass block lighted 'window ' so you can pretend it is daytime outside along with in-room tea and coffee combine to offset the high cost of relaxing before a 14 hour non-stop flight back to LAX. Rates are in three hour time blocks, but very spendy. The down side was that our luggage that was supposed to be checked through didn 't make it to LAX, but that isn 't the hotel 's fault.

Paid $130 for a very serviceable room with two double beds, surprisingly well stocked minibar, and very clean bathroom. The four stars need to be seen in their context it's an airport hotel, about five minutes shuttle drive from Atatürk airport and extremely convenient. Shuttle came at 4:30am on the dot. Surprisingly quiet, despite its flight path location. Shuttle guy was clever and dropped off at arrival instead of departure, which was a zoo. All in all, this is what you need if you have a long layover.

Is it overpriced? Yes! Is it worth every minute when you're in transit for a 9 hour layover with a jet lagged toddler? A MILLION TIMES YES!! The hotel is on the air side of the terminal and provides refuge from the noise and bustle of the international terminal. They will provide a wake up (err, get out of the room NOW) call when your time inside is up, but the clean and quiet and the option to stretch out my legs and get some rest makes it worth the price.

Kind of pricey for a very plain, but clean room. Was stuck at the Istanbul airport when our inbound flight was late and we missed our connection. With no visa for Turkey, and exhausted from little sleep the night before, it was the easiest solution. Quite a lot of nice, not fancy, restaurants at the airport too!