this is a two star hotel and pretty much meets expectations. Some of the other reviewers suggest a multitude of problems, but it seems to me like they were expecting a 3 or 4 star hotel. In terms of location, this hotel is excellent, especially if you use the 'Terravision' coach from Ciampino airport - it drops you 100meters from the front door of the hotel. Also, there are some very good cafes where you can get a great cheap breakfast or lunch within 50m of the hotel.

If you are looking for somewhere cheap to stay (£50 to 60 for a private double room in an excellent location in Rome) and dont mind roughing it a bit, this is the place for you. If you are hoping for a pristine hotel with uniformed and professional staff, look elsewhere.

My friend and I stayed at this so called Hotel in July 2006, and we were not impressed at all.

We arrived in 37 degrees heat late on a Friday night to our Hotel. The foyer downstairs was filthy. looked like it it had never been cleaned and was thirty years old.

Our welcome was brief. We waited 20 mins while the person at reception answered phone calls and were totally ignored. Once he finally got off the phone he had a look at our reservation and asked if that was the only reservation we had, hinting there was a problem ( how many reservations does one need? ) then he gave us a Map and Directions to Room 34 in the Bubbles Hotel - We thought we were staying at Fawlty Towers? We were given no further guidance, for the next 3 days we were on our own.

10 minutes later we were trying to figure out what floor this bubbles place was on as the buzzer suggested 11 but there was only 5 floors ( go figure ). We pressed one of the buzzers of another hotel who kindly informed us Level 3.

Finally we got to our room. Very basic with a crummy open shower with no screen. The shower was right opposite an open window with no curtains ( NO PRIVACY AT ALL..... in the morning we had workmen perving on us from the opposite building! ) but we were so tired we didnt care. We just wanted sleep and to turn on the airconditioner. To our horror the aircon was not working but at midnight theres nothing one can do. We walked back to reception ( in the Fawlty Buidling as there were no phones in the room for communication ) and advised it was not working.

The next day the hotel advised us that someone was looking at the aircon. It happened to be the cleaner ( since when do cleaners become air-con mechanics ? ). We got back to the room at 6. Still the aircon wasnt working, we went to complain and we were not offered another room or a discount on our hotel rate. they really were not bothered.......Trust me it was HOT! The manager was never around to complain to and the reception staff clearly were just waiting for their shift to be over.

The staff were generally kind but i would never stay there again.

Fawlty is a great name to give to the place.

We recently spent a weekend in one of the most beautiful cities, Rome. Unfortunately it was a quite busy weekend and we stayed in a hostel called Bubbles Rooms, which belongs to Hotel fawlty Towers. The location was alright but reviews we'd read beforehand didn't really make us looking forward to our first night. The next morning we even more regretted our decision. Our bodies were covered with red spots and we could heardly endure the itching. Flea bites!!! We went to see the management, but unfortunately only found a lady not feeling responsible for anything. We had to come back three times, every time promised to speak to Basil, the owner. But we never saw him. We did not get any money back. Instead this one night's sleep spoilt our trip and the memories. We stayed at an other hotel afterwards, a very lovely one but had to wear our flea infected clothes during the folliwing days, had to stay at a hotel back in London and sanitise everything before going back to our own flat. It was not only more expensive than having stayed in a 4* hotel from the beginning but also very annoying and disgusting. So if you should fancy going to Rome in a busy season it's definitely worth paying a good place than spoiling your trip and having unpredictable expenses afterwards!!

I thought it best to add my review, since I rely on Trip Advisor when booking hotels and realise other people do and wanted to warn people... keep reading.

I first stayed at Fawlty Towers in 1998 while backpacking around Europe. It was exactly how Lonely Planet described it: cheap, clean and friendly. This is why we booked it again in 2005. The triple room was dingy, dark and there was barely room to move. Even though we had a shower in our room, we didn't use it as it was so tiny and you had to be a contortionist to open the door and manage to enter the bathroom at the same time, so we used the communal bathroom.

The kitchen was hardly equipped - unless you call one plastic plate and one plastic knife for the whole kitchen well-equipped. After buying food to eat on the terrace (the only good thing about Fawlty Towers) we realised there was no cutlery or plates with which to eat!

However, the worst part was yet to come. We heard another gueSt complaining about bed bugs and thought she was just being fussy. However management took her complaint seriously enough to immediately change her room - and yes, we ignored the warning bells that should have been ringing loudly in our ears!

We saw many bugs in our room, but coming from Australia, where bed bugs are virtually non-existent, we assumed they were just summer bugs (the windows were open as it was the middle of summer). We thought bed bugs were tiny and invisible to the naked eye, like dust mites. Very wrong. We got bitten so much but thought they were mosquito bites. After five days we left, thinking we had been bitten by mosquitoes, only to realise after we had left, when we did on a search on the internet as our bites were getting progressively more swollen and itchy, that we had indeed been eaten alive by bed bugs! There were three of us and our WHOLE BODIES were covered in bites: incuding our faces, even our eyelids! We had been in this bed bug infested hell hole and had no idea. It took us over a month for our bites to heal. In the interim, we looked like we had chicken pox. Because the bites were all over our faces, we also looked like we had severe teenage acne.

But the nightmare didn't end there. What many people don't realise about bed bugs is that is a problem that lingers for months afterwards. After coming back to London a few months later, I noticed a tiny bed bug in my bed. This had obviously hatched from a bed bug or egg that had been transported in my suitcase (a common scenario). I then had to pay £150 to get my room sprayed, as once a bed bug has been spotted in a residence, it is a sure sign that there are others lurking, and treatment is needed immediately to avoid infestation.

So was the cheap room rate at Fawlty Towers worth it? This is what we received:
1) Bed bug bites ALL over our bodies and faces that took over a month to heal
2) A £150 bill for the exterminators to eradicate bed bugs that had travelled in our luggaged and taken residency in London with us.

I will never stay here again and my second regret, apart from staying here, is that I never pursued compensation with the management. AVOID AT ALL COSTS!