As this is only a two star hotel we didn't expect too much but we were less than impressed to be told shortly after arriving that if we wanted airconditioning this would cost us an extre €10 per night! The temperature during our stay in Rome was in the high 20s with high humidity so we couldn't manage without aircon and reluctantly agreed to this additional charge. However, I emailed our booking agent to (politely) ask if this was standard practice and got a reply the next morning saying that it was a mistake and that there would be NO extra charge for using the airconditioner during our stay and the price as quoted on our booking sheet was correct.
We arrived on the weekend and I think that the person working reception didn't really know what they were doing, so I'm glad I checked with our booking agent. When we went out on our first day and returned to the hotel around noon, this same person told us we had to 'go away' again because our room hadn't been done yet and the cleaners were having lunch! We eventually got him to understand that we didn't mind if they came in while we were there, but this was clearly something he'd never come across before and he really wanted us to go away.
Once the regular weekday staff were on, everything was fine and we found them to be quite helpful even though the language barrier was a bit hard to negotiate at times. But we managed with my little bit of Italian and their little bit of English to mostly make ourselves understood.
Our room although small, was adequate, clean and fully serviced with clean sheets and towels daily. Breakfast was disappointing with just a croissant, a fruit juice drink, the usual dry rusk type bread and jam. We asked if we could have English Breakfast tea, but that was clearly beyond them and every morning we got Earl Grey tea bags - one each. Luckily we found a supermarket where we were able to buy some tea that we both like so we used those instead of theirs. The milk provided was hot and 'fluffed' as though for a cappuccino, but at least the water was properly hot. This was a surprise bonus as we'd found it hard to get really hot water anywhere else.
The Meridiana is situated very close to everything, only about a 10 minute walk to the main station where you can catch local buses or the Hop On/Off buses that take you to all the main tourist destinations.
I've read some really dreadful reviews about this hotel, but I think the secret is to realise that a 2 star establishment isn't going to give you much luxury and once we cleared up the misunderstanding about the air conditioning, we quite enjoyed our stay here. Because we didn't make a fuss and were always polite to the staff, we found them very willing to provide us with good service. We overhead some other guests getting really aggro because the WiFi wasn't working and they were implying that it was the receptionist's fault when it was clearly a technical problem and was probably corrected a bit later on. I really can't see the point in treating people rudely just because something isn't going your way. The golden rule is to treat others the same way as you like to be treated. We found it worked for us during our entire trip.
- Meridiana Hotel Rome
