Wiser1000
Google
With the exception of one male reception staff member we found the staff unfriendly and completely lacking in any customer service skills. Having been in the travel industry for over 40 years I can only blame the management of this hotel. ||On checking in we were "greeted" and I use the term loosely, by what I presume to be the Owner/Manager/Reception Manager, who was offhand, dismissive and never smiled once. The staff did make an effort but were obviously intimidated by the woman they were working with. At no time was there any attempt to speak English even though my partner, who is Italian, was translating for me. She allocated us what must have been the worst room in the hotel, Room 364. It was on the ground floor, next to the lift, with windows and shutters that hadn’t been cleaned in a very long time and opened directly onto a busy main street which was under major repair. Fortunately, the bed was clean and the bathroom usable, except for the toilet brush which was disgusting, so we thought for a couple of days we could manage to deal with it and started to unpack. We wanted to leave some small electrical goods in the room safe but found it locked so went to reception and through raised eyebrows were given a key to unlock it. ||We left the hotel to see the city and hired some bikes. On returning to the hotel, out of courtesy, asked where we could leave them. My boyfriend was greeted with the same offhand manner by the female staff but was shown where to leave them. On returning to the room, we found it was extremely hot with no air and tried to operate the air conditioning, it didn’t work! There was no way we could open the windows due to traffic, road works and pedestrian noise. By this point I’d lost the plot. So, we went back to reception once more and were greeted by the same negative, unhelpful and quite frankly, sarcastic behaviour. We were told in Italian that either they switched off the heating in the hotel, just for us, so that we could use the air conditioning or basically we would just have to put up with it. I lost it. I told the lady that with the exception of the young man who showed us to our room and where to put the bikes, at no point had we received any kindness or civility from the hotel staff, that it was the worst reception desk I had ever encountered and quite frankly would have checked out if we hadn’t already paid in advance. I suggested under the circumstances she should change the room.||She started to reply in Italian and my boyfriend quite rightly said in English that this was a hotel in a major tourist city and she should speak in English as she could quite plainly understand exactly what was being said. She continued in English. She finally apologised and gave us another room two floors up overlooking the courtyard and not the road so that we could open the windows if we liked. It was far superior to the room we were originally given and we could move after we had had dinner and return the keys to reception whenever we liked. The hotel obviously wasn’t full and the room was spotless.||We only had one further encounter with reception when we checked out, different staff, and once again the same attitude. I don’t blame the staff I blame the management and have no understanding how they can continue to get business if every guest is treated the same.
