Grand Hotel Ortigia

Find somewhere else to stay. This place is like a bad movie. Amazing location, beautiful property, great view from the rooms we had, clean and smelled good. The lovely and nice front desk staff are untrained and lack supervision. As a party of six, we had two doubles and one triple. One double was for my 83 yo father. The put him in a first floor (really the second) which was a duplex layout w a ladder to the sleeping loft. They gladly changed the room to a third floor which was accessed through the restaurant. Yes you had to walk through the dining hall to get to the room. The kids room was adequate yet they wanted to charge us for a third person in the room vs having them stay w my dad. Why would they care if one of the six people stay in one room vs the other? A bit opportunistic to get an extra few euros. Then when we finally wound down at midnight, our room, which was on the second floor, suffered from furniture being moved directly above it as if it was the middle of the day. I called down to the front desk three times only to find no one picked up the phone. I then got dressed and went upstairs to find out what was actually going on and found we were immediately below the restaurant where they were doing their reconfiguration of furniture…in the middle of the night…with paying guests immediately below!!! My dad contacted the front desk for a blanket and was given the run around only for then to take an hour to deliver it. I contacted the manager directly via LinkedIn and of course heard nothing back. Why? Because they care as much as the rest of the staff.

This is a lovely hotel and excellent location but we have a room that has 2 floors. Your luggage has to be on the main floor while the bedroom and bathroom are on the upper level which is so inconvenient. Your clothes have to stay on the main floor since you can't get the luggage up the long, narrow stair case and so you are constantly having to go up and down to get things. Being 66 and 67 it isn's a lot of fun having to go up and down stairs all the time. Also the upstairs is very warm. They brought a fan and it did help a bit but for what you pay you shouldn't have to have a fan. This is supposed to be a 5 star hotel but I wouldn't recommend it for the room itself. They may have better ones available but we were unaware that it was a 2 floor unit when we booked it.