Town House Suite Leone di Sant'Anna - Lucca

5.6

The price was reasonable; the service was non-existent. We (5) arrived at a locked hotel with lots of luggage & no access. I stayed behind with all the luggage while the other 4 went to the only Flea Market in the City that was open once a month, which we all wanted to see. While I waited I tried calling the hotel with no answer & doing whatever I could think of to reach someone to let me in to no avail. Ultimately, the event was long over before I could get registered to leave the luggage. Finally, one of the residents let me in with the luggage when they left the hotel. Over an hour later a college student who ran the desk came to try to help me quickly as he couldn't stay. We were on the 4th Floor and he helped carry all the luggage upstairs (or I would have never made it as there is no elevator). We had paid for access to the kitchen which was actually in the basement and not convenient at all. The young man hesitated to give me wi-fi information as he was in such a hurry & told me we would get it the following day. With some obvious persuasion from me, he gave it to me before he left. We stayed two nights and there was never any assistance at the desk during those 3 days. If we needed assistance we had to knock on a "living quarters" door to see if anyone was available. Even though we heard noise, there were times when no one answered the door. They have absolutely no phone service; no pay phone even, and will not allow anyone to call in. An additional traveler calling us from a US airport could not reach us and we could not call out; there were no phone capabilities. When we were leaving and needed a taxi to catch a train, we could not find anyone to call a taxi or assist. We then had to drag all the luggage in the rain in a mad rash to catch our train.

2.4

We were booked to stay at the Leone di Sant'Anna in a double room with bathroom. When we arrived and after ringing the doorbell and the contact telephone no, a woman appeared at the window. She said we were not staying in Leone di Sant'Anna and took us across the road to another place called Residence Buonamici. This was a scruffy dirty apartment block - we were given a very small room which was dusty and dark. I asked about a price reduction as this was not what we had reserved. The woman explained a larger party had arrived and been given our room and this was the only accommodation available. She offered a discount of 5 euros per night. As we were extremely tired from the journey and were only staying 3 nights we decided to put up with it but I have to stress I was extremely disgusted by this and will be extremely careful when booking accommodation in the future. I have used Venere several times and have never had a problem like this before but it did really ruin our trip to Lucca, a town we love to visit usually. I'm very disappointed.