Settentrionale Esplanade — Hotel in Montecatini Terme

I stayed here for a week as part of a group tour holiday. Apart from the excellent location, close to the town centre in one direction and the funicular in the other, I would not choose to stay in this hotel again.|The rooms are clean but basic. I suspect that the bathroom in my room had not been redone for many years; I have never before seen rusty plugs in a hotel sink or bidet, for example, and the shower worked well but the control was also rusty and the base leaked badly, tricky in what was a really quite small bathroom with limited storage (as you couldn’t put a toiletry bag in the only available floor space due to the leak, so the only place to put it was on top of the toilet cistern).|The bed was quite hard but comfortable; the room was quiet but stuffy with the window closed but noisy at times with it open. The air con didn’t seem to be working, probably because of the time of year. The storage was fine although two of the coat hangers in the wardrobe broke just putting things onto them! (They were a mixed assortment of what looked like plastic ones from shops.) |Being,I think, one of their single rooms, there was one desk chair and nothing else to sit on. The room would have been very cramped with two people in it. There was a fridge, which was good, but the safe which should have been there, wasn’t.|Breakfasts were adequate if, again, quite basic. There was no variety at all during the week’s stay so they became quite monotonous. |We had two included hotel dinners with our tour. Both were very good if somewhat salty. The cannelloni at the second dinner was superb!|Our group were all based in rooms just over the road from the main building. The stair lighting in this building wasn’t always on, even when it was dark outside, making it quite difficult to use the stairs. Even when lit, the lighting wasn’t great.|There were notices about eco-initiatives in the bathroom, and refillable plastic bottles for hand wash and shower gel attached to the walls, but towels were replenished every day even when you replaced them on the rails.|Staff at reception were ok but not particularly polite or helpful; staff in the restaurant and bar were really nice.|The public areas in the main building were well maintained and attractive.|Overall, not to be recommended other than location; from observation I would say that the majority of their custom is from...

We stayed at this hotel as part of a tour of Tuscany and found that it was lacking: the hotel staff wasn't particularly accommodating ("if we have an extra pillow, you can have it, but we're booked up completely and don't have extras" - I did eventually get the extra pillow, 3 days later), the WiFi worked in our room only sporadically (and the concierge wasn't helpful on this point either), the advertised pool was closed for the season, despite the weather being consistently 27 degrees Celsius, and our room was located directly above the hotel bar, which ensured that sleep did not come early, especially the Friday night that there was a bar fight. Again, when asked about the noise level ordinance, the concierge dithered, saying that the hotel has no authority over the bar located in their building and named with their name. Basic room services also didn't really exist - there was a blow dryer in the room that didn't work, our towels were translucent and fraying, and instead of changing the bed linens, the cleaning staff simply rotated which pillow was at the top of the stack so it would be less creased. Breakfast would have benefited from a variety of locally grown ripe fruits (the kiwis we received were very solid, whereas the apples were grainy and wrinkly) and a focus on more interesting options than the option of only plain scrambled or hard boiled...

Terrible stay. What could’ve been a nice getaway in Montecatini turned out to be less relaxing given how the hotel was a bad choice. Luckily I only stayed a few nights, my room and overall the hotel have old furniture with scratches everywhere (when shared my comment to the staff they said the furniture is “vintage” - this is definitely not vintage it’s just really old furniture not changed in decades). The common areas have a smell of stale - making it difficult to just sit there and relax. The hotel building is old with no renovation works done in years, doors are extremely noisy, no soundproofed at all, when in your room you hear everything from the street and the hall. What is not mentioned anywhere, on the hotel website or Booking.com, is that the pool is closed in certain months so I had no access while the hotel having a pool was a major factor in my choice. Since the beginning, the staff was not at all helpful and was actually annoyed by my questions. I also asked information to the staff regarding the thermal baths in Montecatini and they gave me the wrong timings. The breakfast is only 10€ and not surprising at all given the few options on the buffet tables - really disappointing. From the structure to the staff, an...