Hotel Ristorante Dante

First time travelling the world I have found a pool where you must wear a swimming cap!
Local kids caps keep coming off whilst in the pool so what is the purpose????
Plus the pool shuts at 1900h in the middle of summer….. unbelievable

DO NOT STAY AT THIS HOTEL! Awful experience!

We were visiting this beautiful part of Italy to compete in the European championship of clay target shooting. So as competitors, we knew our rest would need to be uninterrupted and stress free. We checked the reviews of this hotel on TripAdvisor and found them to be in favour.

Unfortunately this was not our experience at all. We did not had one night without disturbance at Hotel Ristorante Dante, and on all but one of them it is due to someone (either the manager or his father) shutting off the air conditioning at night, after we have gone to bed. This means we wake up during the night, swimming in our own sweat! It’s uncomfortable and completely unnecessary. We booked a hotel with air conditioning specifically when looking at other hotels locally. This hotel looked best, and so we agreed to pay the cost of the rooms when booking.

We approached the manager about this issue after the first night, and the air conditioning stayed on for one night. However this was the only night he was covering the night shift, and on the other nights of our stay, the owners father was covering the shift. He insisted on shutting the AC off after midnight every night. We were forced to get up at 2am and leave our room to switch it back on at the main switchboard down the hallway!

As we are paying guests, we do not expect someone else to dictate when we may or may not sleep soundly!!!!

To further add insult to injury, the doors into the main hallway all had large gaps around them, so provided little or no sound reduction from the noise of other guests. On our first night the gentleman staying opposite snored loudly enough to wake not only us, but judging by the shouting down the corridor through most of the night, in various languages, most of the other guests too! Comically on the second night the noise changed to the couple one room down, very loudly “expressing their physical attraction” shall we say. This albeit rather funny at the time, resulted in another night of disturbed sleep.

We brought these issues up with the staff at breakfast, who were too scared to raise the issue with the manager and owner for us (our Italian is limited, and the staffs English was very good). They refused to report the issue for fear of their volatile boss sacking them on the spot.
On our third night, the lock in our hotel room door broke, and we were not able to get in. We reported this to the manager who came to try his master key, which also did not work. He proceeded to aggressively swing from the handle, slamming it up and down in an effort to get the door open. At one point we thought he was going to kick the door down as an access method, but eventually he freed the damaged lock. I should mention that this was at around midnight, so you can imagine how many other guests came to voice their displeasure at the amount of noise he was making.

We repeatedly used google translate to explain the issues to the hotel manager & owner, but they didn’t take on board our pleas. Always answering “Ok” with a shrug of not caring. Eventually I contacted an Italian friend of mine and asked her to translate a few paragraphs of our reasoning, which she was kind enough to do very promptly. I handed the message explaining our frustration to the manager who then (on the last night), finally agreed an extra loud “OK”.
Thankfully the AC remained on for that night and we could sleep!
I would not recommend this hotel to anyone looking for a comfortable stay, nor anyone who expects the hotelier to be pleasant or friendly.
I would like to note that the restaurant/breakfast staff & cleaners were excellent, and clearly keep the hotel in business single handily with their friendly manner. Such a shame the facilities and owners/manager do not reflect this.