Boutique hotel Aiello Hotels - Centrale

My stay was a nightmare. There was no hot water when I tried to shower at around 7 pm on my first night. I spent nearly two hours in the bathroom and got less than ten minutes of hot water. Who can manage a cold shower in Milan in winter? The room also had no blackout curtain, so the neon light shone brightly into it every night while I tried to sleep. The building offers a public toilet to tourists too. If you don’t want your Milan holiday to end in regret, avoid Aiello Hotels Milan. It should just be called rooms without any services.

This was a frustrating stay in an old building near Milan train station, on the third floor. There’s no elevator, so you have to haul your bags up three flights yourself. There’s also no reception desk or staff on site. You communicate through WhatsApp, and when I asked for help with my luggage, I was told nobody could assist because shifts start at 10:00 am. The Expedia listing, and probably other listings too, makes it sound like a regular hotel with staff and services that aren’t actually there. The whole experience was inconvenient and far from what I expected. If you need standard hotel amenities, this place won’t suit you. I’d strongly advise checking in advance whether there’s front desk service, elevator access, and luggage help, or staying elsewhere.

The customer service was awful, and the staff were extremely unprofessional and unresponsive. When I arrived, I rang the bell six times and nobody opened the door. I waited outside for 30 minutes before a message finally arrived with instructions. Tania said she’d been “talking” and explaining how to push the door, but I couldn’t hear anything. They could have come down to let me in, or sent those instructions beforehand if they don’t operate like a proper hotel. It felt like they just wanted to make money without offering real service. Don’t be fooled by their paid reviews. I wouldn’t recommend this place to anyone.

The area by the train station is ultra sketchy, and the men and boys outside the entrance made it worse. They walked back and forth, watched us and our luggage, and called and texted another group across the street. The building itself is dirty, old, and run down, with several parts burned out. You can look at it from across the street. There’s no sign outside to show it’s a hotel, which is about the only thing this joke of a place gets five stars for, hiding itself from people trying to find it. The elevator was broken, and reception was on the third floor up a winding staircase. It had clearly been out for a while, with reviews mentioning it at least two months earlier. They’d made no effort to fix it, because apparently the expense isn’t in the operating plan. Save yourself the time, money, and aggravation and stay somewhere else. Try the Spice Hotel, literally one block closer to the train station and one third of the price, with an accessible entrance, 24-hour desk service, working elevators, and good exterior lighting. You know, amenities that actually matter.