Villa Monty Banks — Restaurant in Unione dei comuni Valle del Savio

I stayed here with a group in May. The corner room was comfortable, clean, with lovely views out to the hills and vineyards. Good shower, quiet location, nice large windows that open without screens. ||The included breakfast buffet was pretty ordinary, not particularly inspired and the quality of espresso depended entirely on which staff member was making it! The buffet needed more non-sweet options and a way to toast/heat bread and pastries. Some breakfast meats would have been nice. They do have a breakfast menu, but the prices were high. ||The breakfast room is small and dark, but when I asked to eat outside on the patio, there was absolutely no assistance or interest in helping me carry plate, coffee, and cutlery past the kitchen, up and down several sets of stairs, through multiple doors, outside and then bring dirty dishes back. Too bad, it was lovely eating breakfast outside on a fresh Romagnan spring morning and I think more visitors would really enjoy that if the staff offered more encouragement and assistance.||There is no comfortable downstairs meeting/assembly area, and the lobby is cramped, without chairs. When it is raining or in the evening, there is really no place for a group to assemble. This would be fine for most travelers, but not ideal when a group books multiple rooms at the hotel.||I did not eat a meal in the restaurant, but the snacks for aperitivo were typical, ok. Friday night had live music in the outdoor pavilion, a large number of local partiers and rather ear-splitingly loud music making it rather impossible to carry on conversation. ||I did not use or even look at the spa, it was a substantial additional charge, and the outdoor pool needed a good cleaning. ||This villa is also NOT centrally located. It is on top of a steep hill, and then several miles on a busy road into Cesena. There is no place to walk from the villa, no hiking trails, and no restaurants, bars, shops or anything else within walking distance. It would have been more fun to be more centrally located for evening entertainment, shopping, and morning walks. If you are traveling without your own transportation, be aware that there really is nothing else to do at this location and a taxi into Cesena is about 25 Euros. ||One caution - do NOT ask the staff to do a load of laundry for you! I was only mid-way through my trip and my hand wash was not drying in the room, so I asked for them to do a very small load, for which they charged 136 Euro! Seemed rather excessive, laundry charges were not posted, and the cost once added to my bill was something they were interested in...

We rented two rooms one for us and one for our grown son. Elevator was broke and front desk made no offer to carry up our luggage. The man at the front desk did not show us to the room nor tell us that we needed to dial a certain number for help as there is no one at the front desk should we run into problems in the night. After a late dinner in town I discovered the A/C thermostat was stuck on 23 and I had to sleep in a hot room. There was only a bedsheet on the mattress and no top sheet. and a heavy comforter so I had to sleep on top of the sheet with no cover. The next morning I checked with my son and he did have both sheets but when he pulled back the comforter his sheets had several hairs in the bed. We were told breakfast was at 7:30 A.M but they were setting it up and it was not ready till 8:00 A.M. No tongs for the cheese so everyone was picking it up with their fingers. Guest asked for items she had seen the day before and it was put out at 8.|We wanted to use the spa assuming it came with the room but it was an extra $40 Euro and this was not stated on the website. Floors were filthy and with dead bugs. When we contacted management to complain she was rude and told my Italian husband that I being American had high expectations and that the hotel was NOT A FIVE-star hotel but an Agritourismo hotel and I could expect to pay $1000 a night. I have traveled extensively at Five Star, four star, three star hotels and Agritourismo hotels. This was horrible. We paid close to $500 euro for the two rooms and it was a very bad experience. She refused to take some money off our bill and was flat out denying the breakfast situation, the extra cost on the spa AND told us we should have called a number in the middle of the night we were never told about. Dirty used sheets? I guess I was supposed to bring...

Summarizing: a very bland experience. It was definitely the biggest and only disappointment of our whole wedding. The hotel is classy, the building and location are beautiful and the staff is well trained. But this is not only what a good boutique hotel is made of. At their level of price and in the category they are trying to play, they are far far behind in one key aspect: hospitality. There is no try at all to exceed expectations or amaze a guest. In this regard, they are rather cheap, worse than many hotels in the area. Some examples: No one to help with luggage, even if we had many bags with us and and a 9 month kid in our lap. We were there for a wedding ( our wedding!), we booked ours plus 4 other rooms for some of our guests for 2 nights ( that’s almost 2000 euros only in rooms…).We got absolutely nothing complimentary. Not even a bottle of water. Forget about complimentary drink, or even an upgrade… Be prepared to pay extra in every situation. Do you want an extra croissant in breakfast? Pay for it. Do you want more than the HALF cup of juice offered? Pay for it. Do you want a crib for your baby? Pay for it ( 40 euros a night for a travel crib!That’s outrageous…) We had to really complain about it in order to not have 100% of things charged to our room. Again, management knew it was our wedding. They saw us walking around in suits and wedding dresses. With the exception of the staff during breakfast , we did not hear the word “congratulations”...