Stefano’s villa was beautiful, and ideally located for us just outside Ostuni. The apartment was clean on arrival and well appointed, with a great outside dining and pool area available to guests.
Stefano was also easy to communicate with ahead of the trip despite the English / Italian language barrier and was on time to meet us with keys etc.
However, while the property was beautiful, we did encounter some issues that ultimately defined our stay.
There were consistent problems with the air conditioning in the second bedroom, which did not work throughout our stay - despite Stefano and an engineer visiting. The property’s gate also broke but Stefano fixed this quickly.
We were also shocked to receive a request for €200 to cover damages post our stay despite the fact that a) nothing listed was broken to our knowledge and b) we walked around the property at check out with the hosts wife before we left and nothing of the nature subsequently described in the damages was raised when we did this.
This request felt particularly speculative given we had previously discussed with Stefano that we were leaving €10 to cover the expense of replacement of a single broken wine glass.
There was a further misunderstanding when we invited some friends to lunch and were outright accused of organising a pool party - this was quite clearly not the case - we were attending a wedding later that afternoon that Stefano was aware was our primary reason for staying. This was also regrettable given that our friends were made to leave immediately upon arrival to diffuse the situation.
This was then distorted further once we had completed our stay, as part of a an attempt to solicit additional money from us under the guise of “additional parties staying for multiple nights”
Stefano himself showed up unannounced on at least two occasions without prior warning when we were not in the villa, which we only knew about because he had moved furniture. Had I been travelling on my own or in a small group of girls only (as I have with AirBnB in the past) this would have been particularly unsettling. It would have been respectful for him to give us advanced warning particularly in light of the level of stringency applied to anyone else so much as turning up to the property without Stefano’s pre-authorisation notes above.
In summary a beautiful location and villa but ultimately left a sour taste.