Starhotel Rosa

While the location is amazing, the service is hit and miss. Generally I found the service quite good - some staff put in a lot more effort which was really appreciated and others, not so much. Consistency would be appreciated. I also asked for a room with an open aspect and was put at the end of a hallway at the end of the hotel looking onto a concrete wall. I did not appreciate this at all. It was depressing and the room was not as presented in the hotel website pictures - it was run down and missing cushions etc. I also ordered and paid for an E class Mercedes to take me to the airport and was put into a minivan. This is completely unacceptable. I wouldn't stay there again as the whole vibe is off. I prefer a hotel that is warm, friendly, inviting and prioritises it's customers and their needs.

I booked this hotel because of its wonderful location ( behind the Duomo) but did not know it. Well, it is an absolute gem! You enter a cool, elegant space that smells gorgeous. The staff are impeccably polite and helpful and ,to add delight to my 60th birthday trip , we were shown to our room personally (by the very helpful Mirko) where we discovered that we had been upgraded to a beautiful room with a gorgeous bathroom. Additionally, we were able to use the VIP lounge which was cool, spacious and stocked with delicious snacks. The service and care that we received made my birthday weekend so very special. I thank the team hugely for their beautiful hotel .

I was not a guest at the hotel, but I stopped for lunch at the Sfizio restaurant for a quick snack. The service was poor: waiters were inattentive to what was happening at the tables, needing to be called constantly, and the dining room management was confused, with no clear point of contact. This alone would have been enough to make the experience disappointing. The worst part, however, came at the time of the bill, where I found myself charged €11.30 under the heading “VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTION” (an amount I later discovered to be exactly 10% of the consumption). I asked the waitress for an explanation of what that CONTRIBUTION was and—since it was indicated as VOLUNTARY—when I had ever asked her to add it to the bill. Instead of clarifying immediately what it was, the first response was that if I didn't want to pay it, she would remove it immediately. Before asking for its removal, I insisted on understanding the nature of the charge, but I received confused and unconvincing answers. Only after further questions was I told that it was a sort of tip or additional service charge “intended to be divided among all the staff” (?!). Honestly, I felt taken for a fool, not by her but by the hotel. If it is truly a tip, the customer should decide freely whether to leave it and in what amount; it should not appear automatically on the bill only to be removed when someone notices it. Furthermore, the bill also included a space for tips, and the cover charge was billed separately. If it had been a 10% service charge, it would have been more honest to clearly indicate it as such, instead of using a vague term like “Contribution” …and why define it as “voluntary” anyway?? Moreover, I do not recall seeing the item “10% voluntary contribution on listed prices” on the menu; and if it wasn't there, it would be even more serious. Assuming it was there, it must have been in such small print or in such an inconspicuous position that it was practically unreadable. In Italy, in fact, it is not customary to find an additional service charge (let alone one disguised as a “voluntary contribution”), especially when the cover charge is billed separately and the prices are already quite high. Feeling like I was being taken for a fool. Check your bill carefully before giving your unwanted contribution to the already thriving EBITDA of the hotel chain.