We have been in the hospitality industry our entire lives. More than 40 years. Restaurant owners as well as resort/hotel proprietors. Elena has to be the epitome of how hospitality has declined in this day and age, at least in the United States, but she has brought it to a new low in Italy.
Considering we are upper middle age, we still get very excited when we travel, especially to Italy, our happy place. We might be overly communicative, due to our excitement, but Elena could not care less and forgets that we are paying guests, traveling thousands of miles, not from down the street, and would never, not even one time, answer our messages or communicate back to us in any way.
Now, here, believe it or not is the worst part of all...
We arrived in Rome and 2 hours before check in, SHE CANCELLED OUR RESERVATION!!!!! A Friday in Rome, still busy season, and not a room to be had, unless we paid minimum €600 a night in the city center!!! We had to take a train back to Firenze THAT DAY, lose our next train ticket to Bologna, which was where we were going after 2 nights in Rome, everything we paid for in advance in Rome, cancelation of our pilgrimage of churches and having to get accommodations outside of Firenze, since we know the area better, and taxis to the hotel, as well as humping our luggage everywhere we went.
Elena should not be permitted to rent her rooms on any legitimate platform. She has countless bad reviews and aside from that, what kind of a person does what she did??? She blames it on Airbnb and thinks that we are ignorant. We booked this in December of 2021 and she said the room was overbooked. This cheap, tiny little room was overbooked since December of 2021 when we made our reservation?? She is a liar. She took a higher price and pushed us out.
We will never use Airbnb again, as they did not help one bit. We are also going to get our attorney involved when we return home.
If you book with Elena, you are taking a huge chance in regards to your precious holiday. Go ahead if you don't care as she does not care. Grazie.