Well this place was a mixed bag. First off the apartment is totally gorgeous and huge! The place itself was really perfect. It exceeded our expectations in size and grandeur. The only issues we had with the place itself were (1) the house is quite old so the sink got clogged often, but the hosts gave us instructions to use the plunger to fix it, which worked, (2) only one set of keys so we weren’t able to go out and come back separately, and (3) the house being old used an old plug system, our adapters didn’t work but there was one extension chord provided. But it did mean that we could not charge our phones upstairs in the bedroom.
Though the house was incredible, the hospitality of the host could use improvement.
First off it wasn’t Marina we communicated with, but her son Guiseppe. He informed us the day before we arrived that we’d owe an additional 100 euros (increasing the cost by 30%) at arrival since we would be two people under the reservation and not one, despite the fact that the listing makes no mention of that - in fact it states that the house is perfect for couples. When we asked what additional benefit or amenities we would receive for the added cost, he said nothing. Hosts are entitled to make their own pricing, but we found this to be pretty strange in addition to being outside of our budget. We asked if based on the misunderstanding he would prefer to cancel our reservation; he said we’d have to do it and take a penalty of 50% of the booking which obviously wasn’t an option either. In the end, it just made the entire interaction feel like we were being nickle and dimed. I’ve had some amazing air bnb hosts that really make the effort to make us feel welcome and comfortable and this was just sadly not one of them. It is for this reason that despite the house itself being wonderful and wonderfully located, we probably wouldn’t come back.