Our family just finished a week in Marina di Pietrasanta at the Hotel Verdemare. We chose the hotel mainly on the strength of a positive review at this site, so our expectations were perhaps too high. We were quite disappointed by our first impression of the rooms, which were dark, damp and musty. The hotel is spread over three buildings and our room was on the ground floor of the building "at the back," i.e., surrounded by a large hedge and parking lot and street on three sides. We booked late, so I guess we had to take what we got, and Euro 124 a night for a double room with breakfast is not a bad price for a hotel in one of Italy's most popular resort areas in July. But it is a drag that so many four-star hotels have these two-star rooms in reserve. We were quite envious of the guests living in the other buildings, which looked quite charming.
What we liked: 1) a pleasant location away from the very busy beach area; 2) a good breakfast buffet served by a friendly staff.
What we didn't like: 1) A stern receptionist who didn't make us feel overly welcome; 2) The dark, musty rooms. Take the advice of an earlier reviewer and look at different rooms if you have the chance (we didn't - it was booked full); 3) The absence of any view at all is not what you're looking for in a vacation hotel; 4) Noisy - we could hear everything in the neighboring rooms, not to mention the kitchen getting fired up next door. No sleeping past 8 o'clock in the morning; 5) Never knew when the hot shower would turn cold; 6) Housekeeping. There was a ton of dust under the beds in the kids' room, which was causing allergy problems. We asked them to sweep, and instead they applied some kind of industrial-strength solvent which made the room uninhabitable for the next four hours. The worst thing is that they insisted there was no strong odor, even though it literally brought tears to our eyes; 7) Plenty of other small complaints that we would have gladly overlooked if they had tried a bit harder to provide a decent room.
Despite these complaints, I can easily imagine that this is nice place to stay. It's certainly a pleasant looking hotel in an area where most are shabby looking tourist traps. The problem, in a nutshell, is that they have some rooms that are not four-star quality, and they should tell you this in advance.