Dante

Getting there by car is easy, and the hotel is in a very convenient spot for travellers. The rooms aren’t new, so it may not be the best choice for a holiday trip, but the service was very nice and professional.

The restaurant and breakfast staff, along with the cleaners, were excellent and friendly. It’s a shame the owners, manager, and facilities didn’t match that. I wouldn’t recommend this hotel to anyone wanting a comfortable stay or expecting pleasant, friendly treatment from the hotelier. We were in this beautiful part of Italy for the European championship of clay target shooting, so uninterrupted rest mattered to us. TripAdvisor reviews had been positive, and we chose this hotel over others in the area because it had air conditioning. We were willing to pay the room price for that. But we didn’t get a single undisturbed night at Hotel Ristorante Dante. On all but one night, someone, either the manager or his father, switched off the AC after we’d gone to bed. We’d wake up in the night drenched in sweat. After we raised it with the manager following the first night, the AC stayed on once. His father covered the other nights and insisted on turning it off after midnight. We ended up getting up at 2am and walking down the hall to the main switchboard to turn it back on. As paying guests, we didn’t expect someone else to decide whether we could sleep comfortably. Noise was another problem. The doors to the main hallway had big gaps around them, so they did little to block sound. The first night, the man opposite us snored loudly enough to wake us, and there was shouting in different languages along the corridor for much of the night. The next night, a couple one room down were loudly “expressing their physical attraction,” which was funny in a way, but still kept us awake. We mentioned the problems to the staff at breakfast. Our Italian is limited, and their English was very good, but they were afraid to bring it up with the manager and owner because they feared their volatile boss might sack them on the spot. We also tried Google Translate to explain things to the manager and owner, but they just said “Ok” and shrugged as if they didn’t care. In the end, an Italian friend quickly translated a few paragraphs for us. I gave the message to the manager, and on our last night he finally agreed with an extra-loud “OK.” The AC stayed on, and we got some sleep. On the third night, the lock on our room door broke, and we couldn’t get in. The manager tried his master key, which didn’t work, then aggressively swung on the handle and slammed it up and down to force the door open. For a moment we thought he might kick it in. He eventually freed the damaged lock. This was around midnight, and the noise brought other guests out to complain.

In the middle of summer, the pool closes at 1900h. Unbelievable. This is the first pool I’ve come across in all my travels where you have to wear a swimming cap. The local kids’ caps keep falling off in the water, so what’s the point?

The beach was awesome, and the service was amazing.