Damiva — Hotel in Rome

DO NOT BOOK!

We booked 3 days because of the positive Booking.com reviews and photos. Later, we read Google reviews and realized others had the same issues we did. Don't trust Booking.com's reviews.

We arrived around 4 hours after the initial reservation.

There is no designated parking. We had to park in the middle of the main street (see photo). It's not a good start. After parking, we observed many transient people in the area, which is unfortunately sort of expected in many major cities but did not give a good location vibe.

Then, we could not locate the entrance to the hotel. Had to call Ivan, who led us to an apartment building entrance next to another building that is under construction. Ivan then remotely unlocked the apartment building so we could enter the lobby (yes, not a hotel).

We proceeded through the lobby to a small, dilapidated, and very out of date elevator.

Went to the 6th floor, where we met Ivan outside the apartment room door. Ivan was initially very nice, and we learned that this is basically a room in a shared apartment that was being rented out.

We apologized to Ivan and explained that we misunderstood the rental and voiced genuine concern for the area, the elevator, and the access facilities.

Ivan seemed understanding and agreed to process a refund but had some hesitation, which made us nervous. Ivan explained that if he canceled the reservation on his end, it causes problems with Booking.com, and he asked us to submit the request, which we completed. Ivan even recommended a different location to us that sounded more like what we were looking for. I was impressed with Ivan by this point.

The request advised that the agent would need to approve the request, which we thought he would approve based on our interaction.

At this point, I intended on writing a positive but informative review. However, things went south quickly after.

After waiting an hour or so for the refund approval, we contacted Ivan via WhatsApp. After several more hours, we called Ivan, but he did not answer. Ivan finally text replied and apologized for the delayed response and blamed poor phone reception.

Ivan then explained that someone else would need to rent the room instead to process the full refund and advised that during our 4 hour reservation, he had declined a reservation. This was odd because during our in-person interaction, it sounded as though he had more than 1 open room for rent.

I asked Ivan what would happen if he did not get a new renter, and he ignored us.

For the 4 hour reservation window, they are trying to retain the entire 3 nights' rent.

We take responsibility for not throughly reading the listing (reviews indicate others made the same mistake). We hope this was not intentionally misleading, but there's definitely a pattern.

We're confident Ivan or other representatives will reply to this to justify keeping money they did not earn, and that's their karma to deal with, but... ask yourself before booking, is your hard earned money and vacation time (in our case) worth possibly dealing with this, or is there a better alternative... maybe the hotel Ivan suggested to us perhaps...? FYI, stayed at Marriott instead.

Perhaps if Ivan didn't lead us to think the refund would not be an issue, we may have just stayed and dealt with some temporary roommates and the other things.

Thanks for the read, I hope you make a better decision than we did.

Update: Ivan replied to this review and is denying me ever even going to the facility, which is a blatant lie. He is even denying the elevator even being at the facility, which is really comical because anyone who goes will see it.

Ivan's reply to this review further supports my suspicion that the misleading ad is intentional, and he's trying to block reviews to continue to deceive others. Don't fall for the scam.

He already tried blocking this review, but google overruled the attempt. Thank you, Google, for supporting...

All in all good choice, but keep in mind this is BED & BREAKFEAST type room in a flat. Not a HOTEL. we were missguided when booked this "hotel" on booking.com

We stayed there 2023/04/30-2023/05/04

Message to the owner - you really need to upgrade the doors with some soundproof option. Your MS Teams conversations are loud and annoying...

Continuing to the sound topic - room isnt very good in terms of soundproof. You can crearly hear when other guests in the rooms taking shower or when the elevator is working.

The room itself was ok, very nice, clean and comfortable! 5stars for that.

About the breakfast - you get vouchers of local coffe restaurant. There you are able to order (for free) only one coffe and one sweet pastry.. this is sad.. i dont call it breakfast.

Public transportation - yes bus station is next to the house, but Italian buses tend to be late or not to arrive on planned schedule, this is quite annoying. We decided to use metro which is ~18min by foot from the house.

In conclusion I would say like that - overpriced option for a bed&breakfast room. 100+euros with breakfast which is literally worth no more...

Unfortunately we had expected some sort of a more professional set up. Although the price is good we felt very uncomfortable with the landlord staying next door and with other couples we could hear through the wall. It felt very strange as w had expected privacy. The location is about 10/15 mins on regular bus to Rome city which was fine and the room was decent for the price but we felt majorly wierded out by the lack of privacy and feeling of being in someone's apartment. Not at all what we expected.||||The apartment is in a residential block and is quite high up. We didn't know there was a lift so be sure to ask as we carted our luggage up many many floors. We genuinely thought we were in the wrong place.||||I think it's great for singles or more casual travellers but we really didn't enjoy the feeling of being next door to the landlord and other couples, it felt like going home to live with your parents again.||||You'll get a voucher to go to a cafe close by which is nice but again isn't the best for...