Mallory F.
Yelp
We stayed at the Grand Hotel Savoia on the first night of our honeymoon. My husband found it, and was so excited about the stay. We were so excited about the spa facilities and the gorgeous rooms. We believed that we'd found a great deal on the room, and were under the impression that the spa facilities were a part of the package.
I wish that I could give this hotel 5 stars like the other Yelpers have. This hotel has done so well on Yelp, had an 8.6 rating on booking.com and was the top-rated hotel Trip Advisor. To say that this hotel fell short of expectations is an understatement.
We got to the hotel at midday, and were excited to set our things in our room and head out to explore Genoa since we were only there until 11am the next day. Things started off okay... We checked-in at the hotel and were told that to access the spa, it would be €25. I was annoyed by this because how much time could we possibly spend in this place to make it worth €25 per person. The agent explained (and boasted) that the charge was per room, and for the entire stay. That sounded reasonable for a couple staying for multiple days. A big expensive for one night, however. We decided to go explore and then see if we felt like adding it later.
We got to the room, and were impressed by the decor. The bathroom had a nice bath, with generous bath samples, including bath salts, gel, lotion, shampoo, conditioner, mouth wash. We dropped our stuff off in hopes that we could go explore. As we were leaving, we realised the door wouldn't properly close and the latch wouldn't lock. Chris found a housekeeper down the hallway, and explained as best as he could in Italian. She fiddled with the door, and saw there was an actual problem, so she called down to someone else. That someone else came to fix it, and then called another someone else. Neither could so they told us to "wait a minute". After 10-15 minutes of waiting, I went downstairs to see what was going on. In all, we'd waited over an hour for something to be done, and the first day of our honeymoon was really not going well. I waited in a huge line to be consistently ignored. Once I finally got to the front, I asked to speak with a manager on duty. Apparently that didn't exist. She asked to know why I wanted to speak with one, and I explained that we only had the afternoon to explore the town. This is the first night of our honeymoon and it was going badly. She explained that they had given us a new room, and acted like that was in some way going way above and beyond. I expected that they should have been apologetic and offered something by way of making it up to us. Nothing came, so I did the cheeky thing and asked. I requested that they add the spa to our room for the trouble. She begrudgingly did it, but acted like it was me being silly.
We went up to the new room, and it smelled overwhelmingly of smoke. I went back down to explain that I couldn't stay in that room, and she said "that one won't work for you either?" No. No, it won't, miss eyeroll. I don't believe it's too much to ask to stay in a room that only my husband and I can access via our keys or that isn't a smoke lounge. None of this was my fault. I shouldn't have received the eye rolls and accusatory tone.
The third room didn't have a tub and the bed looks smaller, but it was what it was. We explored Genoa for a while, and then returned to the hotel to make use of the spa. The pool was much smaller than the photos suggest. There were four couples in it, and that was plenty. It did have jets and a shower like feature. We were as far away from the shower feature as we could be, but when someone was under it, I found that I was getting pretty splashed. They had some lounge chairs facing the pool. There was a room that was standard temperature, with heated rocks that you sit on. It would have been nice if there would have been towels available. We looked for the hot tubs, but they weren't anywhere to be found. Apparently they are up on the roof. We went up there, and they weren't in operation. Would have been nice if they would have mentioned that.
The hotel lobby is gorgeous and it's a quick walk to the train station, but would probably not stay there again because of our experience. Honestly, things happen to rooms. I wasn't mad about the door not working, but felt like they could have tried to make it up to us a bit, and then when the second room was full of smoke smell, I was apparently to blame for being ridiculous or expecting too much.