Castle Hostel

A strategic location to stay especially if you travel solo or with family. Just less than 5 minutes you can reach tram station either Sultanahmet or Cemberlitas. We took a dorm for female and have the kitchen facilities and clean and friendly staff (Umar, Bayrem ~i dont know if this the correct spelling 🤣) Highly recommended 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻❤️

The location is excellent for visiting many of the historic sites in what was once Constantinople. At the time, I think it was the most reasonably priced for the location. The place was kept clean, the staff was friendly, and the breakfasts were tasty. On arrival they initially gave a differently laid out room than what I booked, but changed to the correct one when I explained our situation. I recommend this place and would stay again if in the Sultanahmet area. We actually stayed there in March 2015; I just remembered I told them I would leave a review. Hopefully, better late than never.

HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE! I initially booked this hostel for a stay of five days around the 15th of February. I did this through booking.com and according to the terms of agreement I could cancel for free till the 28th of February. I also picked the option to ONLY pay at the hostel upon check-in. Then the following happened. 1. On the 25th of Feb I woke in the middle of the night to find that the hostel had charged my card 886 Turkish Lira (TRY). Fortunately the available balance was not sufficient and so the transaction failed. However a few minutes later(while I was on the phone to my bank) a charge of 400 TRY was made to my card much to my dismay. 2. I immediately called the hostel and inquired as to why this had been done. A very unprofessional gentlemen on the otherside in terrible English informed me that the hostel felt that as they had a lot of potential bookings they had decided to charge my card early which according to the terms of booking was not allowed. 3. As I found this to be VERY unprofessional and not part of the terms of agreement I asked the hostel to immediately refund my money and cancel my booking (at the time I did not know that since the booking had been made through booking.com I had to also cancel via booking.com). However the hostel assured me that this would be done and a few minutes later my money was refunded. I also assumed at the time that the booking had been cancelled. 4. On the night of the 15th of March a sum of TRY 912 (Or USD 235) was charged to my card by the hostel much to my horror. 5. My trip to Turkey had later been cancelled due to health reasons on my part and my mother not obtaining a VISA on time so I was not even in the country when this transaction was made. 6. I once again immediately called the Hostel and asked for a refund. This time however I was immediately hung up on. After several more attempts I was informed that the person on the otherside didn't speak English and that I should call back later. When I did call back much later I was once again hung up on. After several more attempts I finally managed to speak to someone in English who informed me that I should have cancelled the booking myself and that as it was my fault no money could be refunded. 7. I insisted that when I asked for the booking to be cancelled, if it wasn't possible I should have been told at that point that it was not possible as I would have then proceeded to cancel the booking with the website. 8. Now after days of emails and calls to both the hostel and booking.com, the hostel has finally refused yet again to refund this much needed money to me, even after being contacted by booking.com who asked that they make a full refund to me or even a partial one if a full one weren't possible. I travel for a living and have been to turkey several times and this is by far the worst experience I have ever had with any hotel/hostel/Airbnb. The hostel management are theives and are far better suited for a life of fraud and conning people out of their money than running a legitimate hostel. Save yourself the trouble and stress AND your money and don't book with CASTLE HOSTEL . ps: I have proof of the incorrect charges on the 25th of Feb and of the email from booking.com that states they asked the hostel to refund my money should anyone wish to dispute my claims