This hotel was advertised as close to the airports and 20 minutes' drive from the Centre of Rome. It may be a 20 minute drive but on public transport it took about an hour and a half each way including waiting etc. You need to take a shuttlebus (which you have to book in advance) to the local mainline station, then a train into the centre of Rome, where you can pick up the Metro. There were only 6 seats in the shuttlebus and it doesn't run on Mondays. You can alternatively get a public bus to the station, but you can't buy a ticket on the bus. We asked on the first day where we could get a bus from but they didn't tell us that they could sell us a bus ticket at the hotel. We found this out when we were leaving.
The biggest problem was the lack of information. The travelling into Rome was fairly easy (if a bit time-consuming) once we got used to it, but we were just dropped off at a station and had to work out for ourselves how to get into Rome, how to work the ticket machine, where to get off etc. It would be really easy to give this information to all guests, and yet they didn't.
The staff at reception were quite rude and unhelpful, and did not seem to think it was their job to give any information about anything. If you asked them a question they would give you the exact piece of information you asked for but nothing more. We saw them refusing to investigate another guest's complaint about their room. They had our leaving date wrong, and our final bill wrong. This wouldn't necessarily have been a major problem (everyone makes mistakes) but they didn't apologise and somehow made us feel like it was our fault (they were undercharging us, so I felt we were doing them a favour to point it out!)
The hotel is also down a very bumpy, muddy road with potholes in. It is very dark to walk down at night after getting off the public bus.
The room was clean and fairly comfortable. The food in the restaurant was nice, though there wasn't a great deal of choice. The fruit juices at breakfast were very watered down and sometimes the choice at breakfast was a little narrow too.
The hotel was cheap, and although it was not really a 4 star hotel, the facilities were reasonable for what we had paid. It looks lovely from the outside and has the potential to be a very good hotel. More information about the hotel and surrounding area should be given to guests and the staff need to be more polite. The location is a problem but could be overcome if they ran shuttlebuses right into the centre of Rome several times a day including Mondays (even if they charged a small amount for them).
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