Holiday Inn, Rome West Review

Overall Rating

Free courtesy bus to city
Nice room

Only 2 courtesy buses per day to the main airport
Unhelpful staff
No air conditioning until May (Roman policy?)

The Rome West version of Holiday Inn is a nice enough place, but we only stayed here because everything closer to the city was full.

The room itself was great. Clean, large and comfortable.

If you want to make use of the free courtesy bus to/from the airport, you need to book your flights last, and be prepared to pay higher air fares to travel at peak times, as this is the only time you can use the hotel bus to avoid the 40 Euro taxi.

On arrival the weather was warm and muggy (late April) and the air conditioning wouldn't work. When we enquired with reception, they told us that it is a policy in Rome that air conditioning isn't used until May, so we had to leave our window open for our entire stay.

This wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for the mosquitoes that kept us up half the night, and the car alarm that went off literally for our entire first night. When we asked reception what they were doing about the car alarm they said they couldn't locate the owner, so we'd just have to put up with it! They'd obviously never heard of towing it, or better still taking down the car's registration when the owner checked-in. So to save themselves the hassle of finding the owner, everyone else at the hotel had to suffer. Another option they failed to think of was to offer us a token gesture in apology - like say a couple of free drinks at the bar?

The hotel claimed that all staff spoke fluent Italian, English and Spanish. However, this isn't true. The staff in the restaurant spoke broken English, and when there was a communication break down they became irritated and rude. One female staff member brought us some food at one stage that we hadn't ordered. We said it wasn't ours and asked her to take it away. It turned out that it was a new menu item they wanted us to try for free, but rather than "offering" it to us, she simply got frustrated and slammed 2 plates down on our table and stormed off. In the end I doubt it will make the menu. Most of the food is average and over-priced.

Their website also mentioned a pool. With the warm weather we were looking forward to making use of it. However, when we got there it was closed for renovation. It would've been useful to mention this on the website.