The hotels on my doorstep

The Little Hotel Book has survived the problems afflicting the publishing industry and is still going strong. At the same time the boutique hotel movement has boomed, with so many new properties opening, especially in the hotspots of İstanbul, Alaçatı, Bodrum, Antalya and Cappadocia, that it's hard to keep pace with developments. Certainly it's no longer possible for one or two people to visit all the potential newcomers in a short space of time, which has made it much harder for a guidebook to cover all the options.

These days, of course, it's much easier for hotels to market themselves to potential clients via their own websites and social-media-cum-reservation sites such as tripadvisor and booking.com. But now, the new Turkish Small Hotels Association has sprung to life, the aim being to unite the owners of the best boutique hotels in an attempt not just to publicize themselves better but also to raise standards, especially in terms of staff training.

The driving force behind this new movement is Faruk Boyacı, the Nevşehir-born owner of Sirkeci Group Hotels, which has grown up in the newly popular part of İstanbul between the Gülhane and Sirkeci tram stops. Last week he descended on Göreme to sign up hoteliers to the very un-Cappadocian idea of collaboration.

The trouble with living somewhere for a long time is that it tends to make you complacent. Over the last couple of years I wouldn't like to say how many new hotels have opened in Cappadocia, and it's often fondly assumed by my friends that I have dutifully visited each of them. Sad to say, the truth is rather different. Indeed, there's a better chance that I would have been to a newly opened hotel in Diyarbakır than one just opened in Göreme, where from day to day my thoughts tend to be more taken up with whether I've paid my water bill and ordered enough cat food to get my feline family through the month than on who has opened a new business just up the road from me.

Thus it was that I found myself rather shamefacedly venturing over to the opposite side of the village (oh, all of 10 minutes' walk away) last week to attend an introductory get-together in the Miras Hotel, one of those I had not yet gotten around to visiting, which turned out to have a delightful room just perfect for a gathering of 20 or so people, with a stone wall ideal for a PowerPoint presentation.

Inevitably, perhaps, the hoteliers who came along were the usual suspects. On the other hand, I also made the acquaintance of the staff from the new Doors of Cappadocia Hotel, housed in an impressive building on a bluff overlooking the road out to Uçhisar. Guiltily I realized that the hotel was another one I had yet to visit.

At the end of the meeting I wrote a firm note to myself. “Must try and get out more,” it said.

Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.