Beautiful grand old hotel set up a hill in it's own grounds - what could possibly go wrong?
We had booked 2 nights in this 5•L hotel a while ago as part of our holiday touring Italy. When we arrived it was clear that The Grande Rallye of Roma FIA supported - so a real big event - were using this hotel as race HQ. Cars and people all over but no problem the hotel is big enough to cope. Then however over the same period of time the hotel was hosting the epp (European People's Party) conference. The place was crawling with delegates, MEP's, Senators, security, police, tv crews, press photographers and many many other organisers and various 'hangers on''.
Normal tourists in the hotel, which my wife and I were, were made to feel as welcome as a bad rash. The hotel in my opinion could not cope with the volume and needs of the epp entourage never mind the odd tourist. 1 member of staff tried to run the entire bar on the Friday evening! On our first breakfast we were virtually ignored by the few staff that were on duty as at around 8:45 am the place was heaving. The 2nd day breakfast was better - perhaps because we decided to go down later to try and avoid the scrum. I did make a point of telling the reception staff on our departure that although I thought the hotel and our bedroom was fantastic there was no way we should have been allowed to stay there with all that was going on.
We had really been looking forward to staying here but feel cheated Definitely not a 5• experience