This apartment is fantastic. It’s in a great location in Venice and is sparkling clean and modern.
We really enjoyed staying here and almost had everything we needed apart from;
Hand soap. There was only old bits of previously used guests bars of soap in one of the bathrooms. Some hand soap in a container with a pump would be appreciated.
Dishwashing tablets and dish sponge. We were asked to have the dishes clean and kitchen tidy upon our checkout. I will always do this anyway however if you ask this of guests a sponge should be supplied and dishwashing tablets rather than just having one liquid pre fill soap ready in the dishwasher allowing us one free dishwasher use during three nights.
Apart from this there was no problems with the apartment and it’s really great.
The biggest problems we faced were with check in.
Florence contacted new days in advance to request a time for our check in. I advised her with a lot of notice we would check in at 12:00pm as advertised on Airbnb the check in is at that time.
On the day of checkin Florence requested we message her when we are one hour from Venice and also again when we arrive and park our car at the parking terminal, which I did. We agreed to meet at a square close to the apartment.
I arrived at the meeting point at 12:00pm and couldn’t see Florence. I messaged her and let her know we had arrived. She took ten minutes to reply and then another ten minutes to arrive. All in all we waited there for 20 minutes with our luggage and dog after lugging it across the city through Sunday tourist crowds.
Florence arrived and walked us to the apartment and helpfully pointed out some locations on the way.
We arrived and were greeted at the apartment by a cleaner, bags of rubbish, other guests luggage and in general a complete and utter mess of disorganisation. (12:45pm)
To make matters even worse the previous guests then arrived back at the apartment requesting things from the fridge.
All my husband and I wanted to do was have some privacy to relax and get changed before going out for lunch, but that was not possible.
When we arrived at the apartment this is the first that Florence has mentioned we can “drop off our bags” and come back. I was not told the apartment was not going to be ready for us until walking in and seeing what I saw. This was not good enough for a host that specifies they are providing you with a service in their listing.
I was then asked to pay the tourist tax which is advertised in the listing as €3 euros per person per night. Florence informed us it’s now €4 euros per person per night. Luckily we had correct change in cash.
After this we left and came back around 3pm hoping to find a ready and presentable apartment that we had paid for and we’re pleased when we could finally relax in the space.
I think if you can’t have the apartment ready for guests by the advertised and agreed check in time then it needs to be updated. The host should also not allow other guests to leave their luggage in your apartment after they check out.
When guests arrive they have been travelling and are tired. We had to get up and be organised and drive to meet Florence on time with our strategy for that beginning at 7am in the morning. Our entire day is essentially based on that check in time. I don’t want to be wasting my precious holiday time with the disorganisation of hosts who should know what they’re doing.
This is a very long review however I wanted to outline this experience in detail as I’ve never written anything below 5 star ratings on all of my Airbnb experiences around the world. This was by far the worst experience I’ve had with Airbnb and I hope I never have to experience a check in like this again.