Relais Villa San Martino

A lovely hotel tucked away in the south of Italy. The food is amazing, and the pool is huge and calm. With only 21 rooms, it never feels overcrowded.

Please avoid this place. We’ve spent just one night here so far, but unfortunately booked five. We feel robbed by the high price for such a poor hotel experience. The pool loungers are so old they’re falling apart, and some are dangerous, with rusty screws sticking out. Our bedroom hadn’t been made, and even after asking, we weren’t given hand soap. Breakfast was a disaster: the “buffet” was empty, coffee service took ages, and orders were wrong or mixed up with other guests’. The room we were given was filthy and disgraceful, and we had to wait when we arrived. Thankfully, after we complained, they moved us to another room. I don’t know how anyone could give this place more than one star. Maybe it was nice ten years ago, but it certainly isn’t now. I’ve attached a couple of photos.

The staff were great and did what they could to help, given the situation. But this didn’t feel like a 5-star stay at all. We were in two rooms across two buildings, and both had issues: hot water took about 20 minutes, which staff said was normal, and the air conditioning switched itself off after a while, including at night. Towels were just hung back up instead of replaced, and the gym’s A/C didn’t work. Breakfast was very poor, though the coffee and juices were great. There were plenty of other problems too.

I wouldn’t book here again. We stayed at the end of May 2025, and what happened made this feel nothing like a 5-star hotel. At about 6:30pm we were given one key card to share and shown to a nice room. The door was stiff, and we accidentally locked ourselves out. Staff said there was no other card, and that this was the only master card. They explained that after a storm they hadn’t repaired access to many rooms, so we couldn’t get back in until the cleaners arrived in the morning, between 8-10am. All our belongings were inside, including money, passports, car keys, and needed medicine. We were moved to a second room with a broken toilet seat and dirt, then to a third room just to sleep. By morning our room had been opened, but nobody told us, despite our valuables being inside. The front desk said they would tell booking.com to arrange a refund, but that never happened. They ignored booking.com’s messages and never followed up on the agreement they’d made about refunding our stay. For a hotel claiming 5 stars, there should be better access to rooms in an emergency. I wish the rating could be zero.