Marcella Royal Hotel — Hotel in Rome

We stayed here during our visit to Rome. Badged a 4 star hotel by Jet 2.

As my previous hotel reviews state, I have stayed at 4 star hotels and this property is a 3.5 at best.

Bad points!!

The stairs leading to the rooftop dining area were threadbare at the top of the stairs!!!

One of the concierge staff called us a liar when we reported another guest for smoking cannabis in their room! Almost resulted in an argument! We know what we could smell and saw the other guest hanging their head out of the window to their room! The odour was not coming from the street as we were on the 6th Floor!! Such a ridiculous suggestion that the strong smell of cannabis can travel from the street to our room!

Restaurant staff dragging tables across the floor every morning from 06:15-07:00. On this point would like to iterate Alessandro, the hotel manageress, made every effort to rectify the situation and was very apologetic.

We had a superior room! No tea and coffee facilities in the room, apparently it is illegal??

Breakfast

Breakfast was served in the rooftop terrace where you could choose to sit indoors or outside. The views from the rooftop terrace with a nice morning coffee got our day started off to a great start.

The breakfast selection was ok, don’t expect a full English breakfast, the only hot food available were toast, scrambled eggs and bacon. Continental breakfast made up of rolls, some meats and one type of cheese. Plenty of jams, marmalades and Nutella were on offer along with a very good selection of fresh fruit and yoghurt. There was also a pancake making machine too. A very good selection to teas and coffee, albeit the cups are very small.

We took breakfast every morning and had to lay our own table (e.g. cutlery etc) on 3 of the 5 mornings, not the service I have experienced of a 4 star hotel.

Good points

Our room had all the amenities you would expect. Clean sheets and bathroom linens daily.

We were checked in early without an additional charge which we were not expecting,

Housekeeping staff were amazing! One lady in particular with brown hair, sorry I didn’t catch her name, was very accommodating and should be on the front desk!! They made sure we had everything we needed and still checked even when we had the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, this is not a criticism, this just demonstrated great guest service.

The rooftop restaurant staff were very friendly despite the lack of organisation skills for breakfast in the morning! Nothing was too much trouble for them.

Alessandro, the manageress was lovely. She made every effort to make the last day of our stay comfortable. She genuinely care’s about her guests.

Although I have given the hotel 4 stars I don’t think giving 3 stars would be a fair assessment. I wouldn’t stay at the hotel again and this is purely based on the cannabis incident and the rudeness of that one male concierge….he definitely needs a lesson in how to speak to guests and lessons in...

Nice hotel, rooftop garden and bar really lovely and the staff running it were fabulous, live music on a couple of the evenings we were there. Breakfast enjoyable, good choice in a lovely environment. The bedroom pretty much as one would expect, but disappointingly no tea/coffee facilities and not allowed to put anything in the mini bar fridge 🤔 so even our bottle water was warm. When we arrived the receptionist was very helpful and sold us non refundable ‘skip the line’ tickets for the Vatican and the colosseum but in hindsight, we should have settled in and given thought to what we wanted to do whilst there before purchasing anything, I think we felt a little railroaded, tired after a long day and we just agreed. We wanted to visit both, but we could have visited both for a lot less cost and with a lot less stress involved if we had just thought about it first. Booking the way we did through the hotel, you are actually given a voucher and then on the day of the visit and not before, you have to go to the tourist station to collect the tickets and the distance between the Vatican and ticket collection point is ridiculous, we had a map and asked several people including the police for directions and even they weren’t sure where this shop/station was, but eventually we found it but the stress at possibly missing our admission slot was awful. Wouldn’t pay for skip the line again for the colosseum, don’t think it was necessary and it actually transpired that the hotel had offered us the admission time of 2 which was great, we collected the tickets and only when we tried to enter did we realise the entry time given on the ticket was 16:45pm and we were denied entry. I even called the ticket station and explained what had happened, we had the voucher given to us by the hotel confirming 2pm but still denied entrance, it was 36degrees and nothing could be done so we had to fill time until we were allowed in. We had early dinner and then went back, but it wasn’t our mistake and it just messed everything up, they were apologetic but not enough so as to change the entry time. It was, even so, a lovely break, extremely hot, if we went again, we would try and find a hotel in the area close to the Pantheon, it’s closer to a lot of the prominent sites and lots of cafes, restaurants and also...

Location: Ideal. Walking distance from every landmark. We walked everywhere even in August. Nice, quiet location. |Hotel and staff: staff were polite, friendly and welcoming. From bar staff to reception, everyone was lovely. Hotel was clean and cool. |Room: we had an economy double. It was small. The air conditioning worked but was very noisy. View of the bins and they were filled up early in the morning. Bathroom was very well equipped. Our room was cleaned daily and towels and bedding changed daily. Mini bar with drinks, first water is free then you’re charged. (There is a small supermarket outside the hotel, turn right and right again. We got supplies there.)|Food at the hotel: breakfast was good. Lots of options. Great view on the rooftop. We shared a pizza on the first day and it was lovely. Drinks a bit pricey. |Rome: extremely hot and busy in August but we coped. We stopped for drinks/coffee regularly. Queues go down very quickly. We were lucky enough to go to St Peter’s Basilica and see The Pope was visiting. All landmarks were within walking distance for us. Grab a map or use your phone. |Restaurants: we tended to wander around and find restaurants that were busy. You will pay more to eat near landmarks, but go a few streets back and the food is still very good. We had an amazing sandwich at All'Antico Vinaio. Queues go down quickly. Tonnarello had amazing pasta, although that is in Trastevere. |Safety: the hotel was very safe and in a nice quiet neighbourhood. We felt very safe walking around Rome at night. There are always people around. Don’t allow people to put things in your hand, they will ask for money. Politely say no thank you to people selling things on the streets if you’re not interested. |Overall: would 100% stay at Marcella Royal again. A perfect base for our...