Istanbul Tourist Pass® — Local services in Şişli

Quite disappointing this pass. I bought the card for the period of June 10-13, 2024, and apart from the fact that I didn't have to wait in a few ticket lines, it didn't convince me otherwise. At each attraction, you needed a guide to enter. I knew this and accepted it from the beginning. But along the way, certain problems arose. The first was that one of the guides, Aisha, was late to the meeting point. The people in the app didn't notify us of this until I contacted them to ask what was happening. After being late, Aisha just scanned the tickets for entry to the Museum of Islamic Art and said three words about it in the courtyard. Then, she wished us "Enjoy" and left, leaving us to visit the museum on our own, without any guidance.

We had the misfortune of encountering Aisha again at Topkapi Palace and Dolmabahce Palace. Although it was stated that the tour at Topkapi would last 2 hours, she rushed it in less than 1 hour, then wished us "Enjoy" and left. She practically took us through the four gates, we visited only two buildings together, and she left us to wander through most of the museum halls in Topkapi on our own. The same scenario repeated at Dolmabahce. Although the tour was supposed to last an hour, after 20 minutes, Aisha wished us "Enjoy" and we had to see the entire palace on our own. Practically, she comes to these attractions just to give us the tickets, which could be provided by Tourist Pass through the app.

Additionally, I had booked a Bosphorus lunch cruise. Since I did not receive confirmation from the cruise operator, I wrote to the Pass team, who told me it was canceled! It wasn't their job to keep in touch with the operator and inform us. Plus, I received no compensation. So, I decided to book two other Bosphorus cruises without meals, one during the day and one at sunset. When I arrived at Topkapi Cafe, the indicated place to pick up both cruise tickets, I found out from the people there that they operate both and thus only gave me a ticket for one cruise of my choice. And this, only after insisting and showing them the messages exchanged on WhatsApp with the Tourist Pass team, because they didn't want to recognize my reservations made through the app for both cruises.

Moreover, although the Galata Tower and Maiden's Tower had reopened after renovations two weeks before I arrived in Istanbul, and I had informed them of this via chat and WhatsApp, requesting tickets for these two attractions, they refused on the grounds that they had not been officially informed about the reopening of the two attractions.

In short, the only good thing was the first day's meeting with the guide Oguzhan, a nice and very knowledgeable guy who explained the histories of Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque to us.

Please don't tell me that Aisha wished us "Enjoy" and left us hanging because guides weren't allowed in those museums. Oguzhan explained to me how he does a 2-hour tour at Topkapi and enters all the palace halls with tourists. Also, at Dolmabahce, I saw a small group of tourists with a guide who was whispering explanations to them as they...

Good to save time (maybe a bit of money, not much) but a couple of scams

So, this is a tricky one...

We stayed in Istanbul in march 2024. While we overall don't regret getting an Istanbul Tourist Pass, there is still room for improvement there. Here are the points that we found problematic:

1. IN 2024, HAGIA SOPHIA IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE PRICE ANYMORE. While this is resulting from a decision taken by the Turkish government and therefore not the fault of the staff, do take into account that you will NOT get inside Hagia Sophia with this pass (again, as of march 2024, this might change in the future). If you book the "Hagia Sophia tour", all you'll get will be an outside tour. Interesting, of course, but highly disappointing if you expect to visit the building. The entrance fee is 25€ pp currently, so it does impact your cultural budget.

2. while most guides were pretty good, we found them a bit uneven. The archeological museum guide was mostly just about getting us inside, with little extra explanation.

3. the "extra activities" were HIGHLY disappointing, some of them are just SCAMS. The "Ottoman photoshoot" simply did not exist (people working at the Google Maps meeting point told us the agency in charge of the pictures had closed a few months ago). When asked about it, the Istanbul Tourist Pass customer service just apologized for the inconvenience and denied the scam, without giving us a phone number or a new location for the place. We simply did not get our pictures. The "rug-making experience" was mostly 5 minutes of showing a craftswoman working on her carpet, literally 20 seconds of us trying it, and 20 minutes of commercial talk from the carpet salesman.

However, there were definitely good sides to the pass too:

1. the night cruise was worth it, you wouldn't want to miss the Bosphorus by night

2. the whirling dervishes show was what you would expect

3. the customer service and reactivity on WhatsApp was good

4. combining all entrance tickets on one pass feels nice and makes you relax more

In the end, with the loss from Hagia Sophia and the Ottoman pictures, I'm not sure we saved money (although if we lost any, it probably wasn't much). Had we done even more things, I guess we could have saved a bit, but that's knowing that our schedule was already pretty packed.

PS: take into account that you can get into all mosques for free, except for Hagia Sophia. For example, you don't save money on the Blue Mosque, only on the...

I honestly have mixed feelings.

It's a great initiative and I like the variety of attractions it offers because it's not just museums. The customer service was also helpful, in general. However, I think it could be MUCH better and here is why:

maybe it's a European standpoint but it's a bit weird to call a guided tour something that literally is entering the tourist side, saying 3 sentences about it and then leaving us by ourselves. It wasn't always the case but generally I think Europeans would expect a full guided tour instead. Maybe it's not how things work in Türkiye but would definitely add value to the whole experience

many information on the website is either not correct or outdated. I wanted to go to the carpet show but upon arrival I was told that the person in charge is on holidays and I should come back tomorrow. They told me to come back any time but the page states the shows are only at 2 specific times of the day. For the Anatolian show, the page says it's a free entrance but in the app it makes you pay 70€ which btw it's a very expensive attraction that you do

for some reason in many of the attractions on the page, where you can enter for free with the pass, it says something like: Regular Sales Price X euros. It is unfair to mislead clients telling them that an entrance to a mosque is 15€ normally when it's actually for free. It happened to me with many places - the prices are almost never what they tell you to be without the pass. I imagine it's their marketing strategy to show you the value of the pass - a very dishonest one if you ask me.

not my own experience but I met other users of this pass and they told me the guided tours at 9 am almost never happened due to the traffic reasons. What's the point of asking people to be somewhere at a certain time and then do not show up? And in any case, whenever it's just letting us go and saying only a few sentences about the place, let me book the entrance with the pass, give me an audioguide and I can go anytime I want, I don't have to wait for you to come (or not).

Generally, I'm not super satisfied with this pass. It could very easily be much better but it's not and that's why I definitely think it's not worth the price, even if you can get your money's value quite quickly. It just looks like they don't care about satisfaction but the money they are gonna...