Villa Agrippina Gran Meliá - The Leading Hotels of the World — Hotel in Rome

My friend and I checked in to the Villa Agrippina Hotel on Thursday, August 20, 2020. The morning of the August, 20, 2020 is when everything went horribly wrong. We woke up and went down for breakfast. After, we returned to the room to get ready for a scheduled tour of the Vatican. I asked my friend to get our passports from the safe. When he opened the safe, a wallet containing two passports, a driver’s license, 2000 Euros, $200 US dollars, a credit card and multiple sim cards were missing. We begin to tear apart the room/our bags in case we ourselves had misplaced these items. We went through this process 3 times before my friend went down to reception. At reception, he asked the hotel staff to check the log of scans to the room to see if anyone had entered while we were eating breakfast. The evening before we had entered the room at 7:30pm and then again at 1am after dinner. In the morning we entered at 10:30am. Allegedly, there had been no other entry scans. He asked reception to double check as we were obviously beginning to panic at the disappearance of the wallet from the hotel safe. At this point, the staff refused to show us the print out of the entry log, only furthering our distress. My friend returned to the room and we tore apart the room again. At that point, I myself went to reception and asked to speak with the Manager. The Manager arrived at our room and we asked him to review the cameras. He indicated that he needed a police warrant to do so. However, when we asked him to call the police, he told us they would not come! The Manager did not seem to be interested in helping us find the missing wallet, nor in assisting us to figure out who entered our room and tampered with our locked safe. Together with him, we searched our room, top to bottom, twice to no avail. We felt frustrated and disappointed with the lack of support and incompetent service, and demanded the Manager accompany us to the police station to file a report. This took an additional two hours. At the police station, I pleaded with the Manager to please ask the staff to search the grounds of the hotel, as maybe someone threw away the wallet with the passports and took the cash. Our passports were what we cared about most. The Manager only agreed to this after pleading and pleading with him. We returned to the hotel, the Manager, myself, my friend, and a housekeeper entered the room to tear it apart one more time. We began going through every item in the luggage. Flipped the mattress. Checked underneath the bed. Opened all the closets. Opened the safe and put our hands in every corner. Every section of the room was thoroughly swept. The Manager and the housekeeper both concluded with us that the missing wallet containing our passports, cash, and credit cards were not in our room. We spent the next 1.5-2 hours in the lobby with the Manager getting assistance on reissuing passports and rearranging our itinerary at our next destination with other hotels. After this, we returned the room. We realized it was already 3:30pm and we had not eaten since the morning. My friend suggested we have lunch and I looked in the safe to find the wallet sitting exactly where we originally left it!! Both of us were in complete disbelief. We ran downstairs to reception and were visibly in extreme distress. Shaking in anger. We asked for our car to immediately be brought to the front. The Manager approached us and brazenly said “Oh I heard you found it” like nothing had happened! We were shocked by this. We paid the bill as we no longer felt safe staying at the property. The blatant and disgusting behavior by the hotel is incomprehensible. What we assume has happened is whoever took the wallet had returned it while we were downstairs with the Manager trying to figure out the situation with the consulate and our further bookings. We immediately packed up our belongings and...

Really disappointed with our stay at Gran Melia Villa Agrippina. Considering the price paid per night and it supposed 5 star status the service has not been up to the level expected.. examples experienced below.

Breakfast was an open buffet and you have to pay extra if you want any cooked dishes made by the kitchen. This is surprising and not inline with much of the excellent 5 star hotels I’ve stayed at..the buffet was perfectly fine but it leaves a sour taste to have to pay extra for a cooked meal..service at the breakfast was prompt so cannot complain with that.

Check in experience was sub par. The receptionist (name was Andrea) had an attitude that made you feel that he was better than you. He made us feel like we were bothering him during the check in process and was not warm nor friendly at all. Over the course of our 4 day stay we saw continued examples of this kind of attitude. We arrived at 12.30pm to be told that our room will be ready shortly and to wait in the adjoining bar for a complimentary Prosecco. At first we were delighted..but as the time passed we realized “ready shortly” is not what we understood that to mean. Two hours later Andrea came over to inform us the room was ready and we were quite fed up by this point. We had saw other groups of families being told to wait in the bar for similar periods of time. It would have been much better to tell us the room won’t be ready until 3pm (formal check in time) and then we could have gone for a walk or to a nearby restaurant without thinking the room could have been ready any minute for two hours. Honestly really, really annoying for us to have sat there for all that time.

Mixed service at the pool. First day was ok where the guys to provide the towels and assign the sun beds were fine. Second day (Fri 23rd June at 4pm) they couldn’t be less bothered to help. The guy brought me to a sun bed and asked me if I wanted a towel (which is strange - when would you lie on a sunbed with no towel) and water. Then when I said yes, he huffed and went back to the entry station to collect me a towel. He didn’t come back to provide me water. I waited and then decided to go up and ask if the water would come or I should go up to the bar to collect it myself. Again - don’t offer me water if you aren’t going to provide it.

The room was a good size but felt old and a little dated. When Andrea escorted us to the room, he mentioned “best not to touch the buttons for the A/C as they don’t really work”. I had read in another review a similar comment so understood what he meant. There was no kettle in the room so we could not make a cup of tea. That’s fine we are in Italy so we made a cup of coffee. Of course the coffee cups they provided in the room were too small for the coffee machine and it instantly overflowed..we realized espressos only!! Also there is no possibility to have an iron / ironing board and there is only one steamer available and we were out of luck…again strange for a 5 star.

The management team could do with learning to crack a smile and maybe even greet guests or check in on them when dining. We found this very bizarre.

The pool itself is stunning, clean and a big size. No complaints there and the main reason why we booked this hotel. Shame about the other aspects, particularly the mixed service.

Would not recommend to stay here nor would return back. I’ve stayed at better hotels in Rome so keep looking is my advice or just lower your expectations if you really want to enjoy the pool.

Final point to highlight, the luggage staff (that greet you upon entry), the maids and the breakfast waiters were excellent and consistently greeted us with genuine smiles. Thank...

We chose this hotel as we wanted to be out of the centre of Rome and nearer to Trastevera. It is about a 20 minute walk to both but be aware it is at the top of a hill so you will need to save some energy to get to your bed! It was also a bit hard to get to from the airport as the Leonardo Express takes you to the centre of Rome and you have to then get to the hotel with your luggage in tow. There is a transfer service available from a kiosk in the airport train station for €16 each - we used this on the way back and let's just say, wear your seat belt and prepare to learn how to swear in Italian! Directions on the hotel website would have be helpful and appreciated. Although the hotel looks very nice it was quite expensive for what it is. Facility wise, you have to pay to use the Spa and any of the nice looking double sun beds from the website photos which didn't seem fair or worth it. Cocktails were around €15 each and the wine started at €40 per bottle. The staff were helpful and pleasant enough but I didn't get the feeling they were happy! We went down to breakfast one morning at about 10 and forgot to put our DND sign out. We came back and the cleaner was in so we went for a 10 minute walk. On our return she was still there (we had left it pretty tidy!) so off we went for a other 10 minutes. Went back again and she was still there so we knocked the door (awkward!) and she rather rudely just barked '5 minutes' at us and didn't even look at us. She came out after a minute and slammed our door and stormed into the cleaning cupboard opposite without saying a word! Then, strangly, reception kept dialling our room and hanging up when we answered. All very odd and still unexplained! There were inconsistencies with policies and procedures between staff (i.e left luggage, concierge info on tickets) which confused us and we also witnessed a lady get very upset on check out as her bill was way more than what she expected. The receptionists couldn't seem to offer any evidence against what she was disputing but refused to budge on the bill which left us feeling like we had to write down our own records of what we put on the room. At the end our bill was only about €10 more than what we expected and I guess that was our error. Also, disappointingly they wouldn't let us use the gym showers before we left after our last day sight seeing (I know this is an extra request but it is the only high end hotel I've stayed in, in various countries, that has denied this!) which was a shame, although they let us use the one by the outdoor pool which helped a bit. Breakfast was hit and miss, not a huge selection and lots of extras you could pay for (like any other egg than scrambled!) but overall what was available was good quality. The room had all the essentials (unless you prefer tea over coffee!) but was a bit small and we could smell cooking fat, possibly from the adjoining building as I'm not sure we were by the kitchen, but we were on the end. All in all, I would return if I found a good offer as it was nice to be away from the noise of the centre of Rome and to have an outdoor pool but I'll definitely be looking at other hotels if we ever have the pleasure to...