Villa Scacciapensieri

An amazing hotel with amazing staff

The villa has a lot of charm and lives up to the image one has of a stay in Tuscany. Offering both the quiet and the chirping of crickets in the countryside while being very close to the center of Siena. A hotel full of authenticity. Strangely not very busy in the middle of August, we assumed that its location could also be a drawback. You have to take the car or the bus to go visit or stroll around Siena. The positioning seems a bit unclear, The rooms are very spacious with air conditioning and furniture completely in the style of authentic Tuscan homes but are clearly starting to show their age. The pool is not heated but does not need to be in the middle of summer. It is very pleasant, especially in the morning or late afternoon because it is shaded. Breakfast is decent with room for improvement; the fruit juice is industrial, which is not up to a 4-star standard. We had questions about the services; for people passing through who are not Italian, it is not obvious or understandable. There are recommendation signs not to bring food or drink into the villa and the rooms, which is unusual but completely understandable. However, there is no clear and attractive commercial alternative to make living with and accepting this type of prohibition easier. For example, there is a room service advertised, but without a menu or prices in the rooms, apart from the few bottles in the minibar. For the prohibition to be better received, if we were the hotel, we would have added a detailed menu in the room offering one or two sandwiches, easy snacks for nibbling or for children (yogurts, small cookies, snacks...) with prices, and offered large bottles of water. In summary, by French standards, it is not a 4-star, but a 3-star++ that needs to follow through on the process to reach the 4th star level. It is missing a few things that are inexpensive to implement to make the difference. Many positive things, but improvements to be imagined. The staff is very pleasant and the place really has charm.

This villa is beautiful, and the pool is amazing, but guests need to be aware of a few things: 1. Their online booking website is compromised. We booked directly through the hotel website, and 100% of all of my personal information was stolen. I had someone contacting me through email and phone impersonating the hotel demanding payment or my reservation would be cancelled. 2. They kind of hold you hostage around drinking water. They have multiple signs saying you cannot bring in any food or drink or risk being fined, and they also tell you that you cannot drink the tap water, and then they charge you for water bottles. Since you're out of the city centre, there is nowhere for you to go get drinking water. We drank the tap water and were fine. 3. I understand that a coperto fee to sit at a restaurant is common practise in Italy; however it is absurd to charge this fee to guests who are actively paying to stay at the hotel. This is double dipping and super annoying.