How we research, what we pick, what we don't pick, and what to do when we get it wrong.
Three kinds of content: neighborhood guides (which area of a city to stay in for which kind of trip), hotel picks (a small shortlist per area, vetted on the same criteria across all 22 cities), and journal articles (longer reads on Turkey-specific subjects). Every piece has a single accountable byline; freelance contributions are vetted before publication and credited explicitly.
A hotel ships in our shortlist only if it meets all four:
What rejects a hotel: persistent complaints about cleanliness, sustained "value" issues (overpriced for the actual room), missing accessibility info on a property that markets to it, or anything our visit found that contradicts marketing claims.
Listed prices are the typical lowest standard double room rate in the property's main season, sourced from Booking.com's published rates and our own search history across the year. Prices change daily; ours are quarterly snapshots, refreshed every March and September. We don't claim live pricing on this site — every "Check availability" link goes to the partner's live booking page where you'll see the exact current rate.
Three sources, ranked: (1) residing in the area — for Istanbul we have a year-round contributor in Cihangir; for Cappadocia we visit annually for at least a week, off-season; (2) repeated visits over multiple years for Antalya, Bodrum, Fethiye, Izmir; (3) a single multi-day visit + verified local sources for the smaller cities. We mark which tier applies on each city page.
Every commercial link on this site is an affiliate link, marked with rel="sponsored nofollow". We earn a commission from successful bookings through Booking.com, Trip.com, GetYourGuide, Localrent, and a handful of others. The commission does not change what we recommend. Our hotel picks predate any affiliate relationship — every property in our shortlist would be there even if Booking.com paid us nothing. Read the full affiliate disclosure.
If we get it wrong — a closed restaurant still listed, a price that's drifted, a policy that changed, an opening that's actually still under construction — please tell us. hello@wheretostayturkey.com goes to the editor. We aim to respond within 48 hours and correct within 7 days. Material corrections are noted on the page with the date the change went live.
We use AI tools for spell-checking, line-editing, and exploring prose alternatives. We do not use AI to generate hotel picks, neighborhood claims, or factual content. Every recommendation has a human in the loop with a name on it. Every block of bodyHtml is read end-to-end by an editor before publication. We will never run hallucinated hotel names, made-up reviews, or AI-generated photography of places that don't exist.
City pages are reviewed once a year minimum and the "last verified" date on each page reflects the most recent walk-through. Hotel shortlists are reviewed every six months. Visa and currency information is reviewed quarterly. Editorial articles are evergreen unless time-sensitive, in which case they carry a "last updated" timestamp at the top.
Editorial: editorial@wheretostayturkey.com. General: hello@wheretostayturkey.com. Postal mail: [Street address, City, Postal Code, Country].
The exact plan we'd give a friend visiting Istanbul. Where to eat, what to skip, how to avoid tourist traps.
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