Ghirlandaio Firenze Guesthouse

We were driving from Nice to Porec, and decided to stop on Florence. The residence is extremely clean. It is small and can be a tad difficult to find, however once there it was great! Parking is elsewhere in an underground parking facility costing 10 euro per 24hours. It takes about 5-10mins to walk to the hotel. We booked on Booking.com We didn’t see or read about checkin between 12-1400. We arrived at 1500. However we rang the number on the window and the owner was there within 5 mins. He spoke great English, and was so helpful. He couldn’t have been more helpful . It small and comfortable, but its greatest asset is it cleanliness. We would stay here again if passing through.

We never actually stayed at the hotel. Why? Because the owner was not there when we arrived and never showed up. Terrible experience. It states on booking.com that the check-in times are from 12pm to 2pm only. As we knew that we would be arriving much later, I had left a note on our online reservation. We never got a response. So on D day, I called them to give them an estimated time between 8:30 and 9pm. The owner spoke nothing else than Italian. So he passed the phone to one of his colleagues I would assume who confirmed it was fine and they would be waiting for us. We arrived at 9. Walked up to the hotel. Came into an open little courtyard. Door was locked. We could see the reception inside. No one was there. So we were hoping they had left us the key in an envelope or something. Nothing. There was a note on the door stating that if we booked via booking.com we would already know what the check-in times were. Yeah..thanks. There were 3 different phone numbers to contact in case of an emergency. I tried the numbers over 10 times each. One of those numbers being the one that had worked fine earlier that afternoon. But of course, this time around, no answer. We waited 45mn in front of the door. Ended up by having to book another hotel because my crying 6 month old baby was now way overdue for her bedtime. As we finally settled into the new hotel and I put my daughter to sleep, I received a phone call from booking. "The owner of Ghirlandaio Firenze Guesthouse would like to know what time you will arrive as he has been waiting for over an hour." BS. I explained the whole situation. They were shocked. Have been fighting to get my money back for a month now. No luck. Because of their strict cancellation policy and the check-in times stipulated on booking.com I probably will never see my money again. Bottom line, unless you can arrive between 12 and 2pm, go somewhere else. Thieves.

Terrible memories. When we booked the reservation we informed that the estimate time of our arrival in this GuestHouse will be 17:00 - 18:00 and we received a reply confirmation message “ok”. Due to a delay of the flight our arrival in there was at 18:30. We tried to contact with the accommodation manager to inform before but nobody answers. After a difficult research in rainy night in Firence we found this Guesthouse accommodation and we entered in a small room which had the following page A4: "If you have booked with booking.com you already know" Directly, we searched in vain if they had left an envelope with keys, room etc. or anything that would inform us... They did not take care for anything at all, such as they took care to make us the charge from the first moment. Probably they didn’t need instructions for that issue... When we were trying vainly to see how to proceed with that unformal situation a couple came out of a room and we asked whether they know if there was someone in there, we replied of the girl that from 15:00 in afternoon nobody was in this Guesthouse. Then we tried again to contact the owner without response. We turned on Booking.com wherever that tried to communicate without result. At the end we were forced booked another accommodation to spend the night in a high rate through Booking.com and without knowing directions on where to find in the rain the new hotel. Apparently after our return, the owner after many calls and communication with the Booking.com, nor answered whether accepts the return of the amount of our stay, nor to explain about what went wrong and such a good accommodation based on rating on booking.com, we faced this situation. It’s a pity that we cannot assess this accommodation by the stay, but based on the existent quality of hospitality and professionalism.