Hotel Villafranca Rome — Hotel in Rome

Most horrendous hotel experience!

We flew into Rome after a 12-hour flight full of joy and hope for our Italian holiday. A few hours later, we checked into our 4 star hotel at 4:30pm and soon found the toilet was not working. The water didn’t return after flushing and then wouldn’t flush again. We called for help. A young man came without success to fix it. He left and came back with a tall woman receptionist. They tried for another 10 minutes.

The woman receptionist came out of the bathroom claiming that it had been fixed, except that it would take 30 minutes to fill up with clean water. And “normal people” would not need to use the bathroom more often than that, anyway.

We asked to change rooms. She said there were no other rooms available, and that we should basically “stop complaining and put up with it” for the night and it might be fixed the next day.

This is what the hotel website says about its staff: “The staff of Hotel Villafranca Rome 4 star hotel are without exception, highly trained and our friendly & welcoming reception staff are also multi lingual. We are committed to providing top quality customer service....”

We refused to put up with it and argued that it was completely unacceptable to expect guests of a 4-star hotel to stay in a room with a dysfunctional toilet. She retorted that we did not understand English and were not listening.

We insisted that they call a plumber. She replied being in Rome, a plumber could not come soon. Another receptionist said the plumber could come at 6:30pm.

Plumbers came at 6:40pm and fixed the toilet within half an hour. They did their work happily and with professionalism.

We went for a meal and came back to find a bottle of wine with a note of apology about the inconvenience from the hotel.

Why a dysfunctional toilet can't be mended without fuss is beyond comprehension. Throughout the incident, this receptionist behaved completely unprofessional. She even tried to insinuate we did not understand English and were not listening. She had seriously tainted reputation of her employer Hotel...

The room looked nothing like it did in the photos. It was very small and there was nowhere for my girlfriend to do her makeup in the evenings. The bed was very uncomfortable, we may as well have been sleeping on the floor. The bathroom was also a lot cheaper looking than advertised in photos. The blankets were very thin for December and we could wake up in the morning freezing cold. As well as this there was scuff marks all over the walls which were in desperate need of a lick of paint for this hotel to be able to claim to be a 4 star. ||The worst problem with the room however was how thin the walls were. We could hear every conversation the man in the room beside us was having on the phone, so much that it sounded as if he was in the room with us. One morning we even got woken up from him coughing at 7am. We could also hear every time he used the bathroom. Our own toilet was also very loud and we had to keep the bathroom door closed every night before going to bed.||Another flaw with this hotel is the elevators. There was 2 elevators but only 1 worked for the 5 days we were there. And the one that worked did not seem one bit safe. As soon as you take a step in it goes down a few inches and when it starts to go up it jolts back down. Definitely the most unsafe elevator I have ever come across.||Another thing that lets the hotel down is the breakfast. The only hot food is sausages, scrambled egg and bacon. One morning all of this was cold and another morning there was no egg. The pastries were nice but it seems like they only put out 2 at a time, so they were usually gone. ||The staff seemed to be the only good thing about this hotel. We...

UPDATE: We discussed the situation with the desk staff the following morning, and they were very receptive to our issues. I appreciate their apology, and have adjusted my previous 1 star rating.

The rooms and amenities are very run down (don’t trust the photos), but even that I would have been able to tolerate if it wasn’t for the racist behavior of the front desk during the check in process.

The hotel room is booked in my name, the credit card is in my name, the US passport I presented clearly identifies my name. Upon entry, I was never acknowledged, and then this attitude continued throughout the entire checkin process. He continued to not make eye contact or address me, even giving forms to sign to my (white) husband — to whom he was friendly and respectful. He continued to address only my husband while explaining the breakfast policy, where the elevator is, and check out process in English — all while continuing to not address or make eye contact with me. And then he says good bye directed to my husband, and again not to me. Because the behavior towards me vs towards my husband was so markedly different, even though my name is the only one on all the documents, it leads me to conclude that this was a racist service experience.

If I had read the negative reviews more carefully, I would not have booked this place. Even though I’m very aware of the prevalence of anti-Asian sentiment in Italy, it’s very jarring to experience this as my first night and...