This is a tough review to write as my only negative one yet, but I think it's responsible to be transparent about bad experiences. Judging by the books on his shelves at least, Matteo isn't a bad guy. But he's sufficiently absent-minded and unresponsive that I would not recommend this place for business travel to anyone. Matteo failed as a host and added further stress to a stressful work trip. The location and the apartment are probably fine for personal stay.
Check-In:
- I had a late flight after work and I was conscious of inconveniencing him with a late check in; I offered to pay a late check-in fee. I wish he had accepted that offer and purchased a lockbox.
- On the day, I messaged to inform him that I got on my plane with no delays, I let him know when I landed, I messaged him from my Uber when I was 15min to destination. No room for confusion here. I did my part of over-communicating with Matteo throughout.
- I was standing outside the door in the cold for a while (with an early morning meeting the next day of course). Radio silence from Matteo. I messaged him multiple times, I called him multiple times (went straight to answering machine without even ringing).
- I began to think I had been scammed into a fake booking, and was on the phone to Airbnb who were working on booking me into a hotel for the night. There were no open cafés/restaurants/places that were open for me to go into for some warmth.
- A bit past midnight, Matteo's neighbors/friends arrived at leisurely pace. Matteo had vaguely mentioned someone would let me in, but had not shared their phone/email or anything. Not only did they not apologize profusely, they had to rummage through the apartment to find keys for me, did not inform me about the weird, gimmicky modern things I should have known about the apartment (see: figuring out getting hot water in the shower at 7 am when you have 5min to shower).
- Needless to say, there was no house manual.
- The next day when Matteo woke up to this news in his inbox, I expected to get a call/a bottle of wine/some sort of an appropriate apology. Instead I just got: "Sorry for seeing this only now. I imagine everything is gonna smoothly in the end?".
Towels:
- No towels were left out, so I had to rummage through cupboards for them in the bathroom and hope the ones I found were clean guest towels. Who knows.
Checkout:
- Matteo did not communicate proactively to arrange checkout. I reached out to him to confirm I could just shut the door and leave.
If you've read all the way to the end, you're probably a business traveler wondering if you should book this place. If you're also pretty easygoing in your personal life but have zero tolerance for silly mistakes and inconveniences when traveling for work, I suggest not.