Orient Occident Hotel Istanbul, Autograph Collection

We chose this hotel to celebrate a special birthday. The staff were very friendly and helpful, the location is handy for all the sites and for us that's unfortunately, where it stops. A major flaw with this hotel, our room (and others), was located on the '1st' floor which turned out to be below street level with no natural light (effectively a basement), the windows looked out onto a wall covered in artificial plants (see pictures) we were so disappointed. At the very least I would expect to be able to know whether it's day or night when the curtains are open, or what the weather is doing, perhaps a street view. We would never have booked this hotel had we known we would be given such a bad room. We asked to change as soon as we were shown the room but were told they were fully booked that night but we could move the next day if there was availability, no one followed up on this. As a consequence we didn't want to spend a minute longer than we had to in the room. These rooms should clearly state they are below street level with no natural light. Needless to say we were very disappointed as we had booked many months previously and if we had known it was a 'basement' room, we would have 100% cancelled. Our celebration weekend was not what we had hoped for.