Gran Melia Rome

We stayed here with our three children en route back from a villa holiday in Italy. It is beautiful. Luxurious and very welcoming. The pool-side bar is fun and relaxed, the restaurant much more formal. Food is excellent. It is expensive but it's worth it. Location great for wandering around all the key Roman sites.

There are a lot of things that are good about this hotel, but unfortunately the poor customer service overshadowed everything else during our stay at the Grand Melia, and I cannot in good conscience recommend staying here. If you are a family with more than one or two children - be warned - they have very few rooms that can accommodate you. We had a mix up with our travel agent, who mistakenly booked our room for two adults and two children, instead of two adults and three children, so upon our arrival, after 18 hours of traveling with three children, and almost no sleep, we were told we couldn't check into our room. In our experience almost every other hotel in this instance would have just offered an additional roll away, or left it up to us to squeeze in (which we were willing to do) but they were completely inflexible, refusing to allow us to take the room, siting unspecified "safety reasons" that they never really clarified. This is a country that allows small children to ride on the back of mopeds without helmets, but god forbid bring an additional roll away to a hotel room - apparently it's not safe! After (and I am not exaggerating) five hours of back and forth with our travel agent and with the hotel, we were finally offered the only two options in the entire hotel had that would accommodate a family of five: the presidential suite or the 360 degree view suite - both beautiful rooms, that come with an incredibly high price tag. If we were to leave the hotel entirely and try to find something on our own, we would have been charged a very large cancellation fee, even though they would not allow us to take the originally booked room. We felt like were held hostage. Ultimately, we took the cheaper of the two options offered to us, and hoped that we could work it out with our travel agent. Given that, at that point, we were paying an exorbitant amount of money to stay at the hotel, one would hope that the customer service would match the cost. Unfortunately, our experience was the opposite. Whether it be the unfriendly front desk staff that looked like they were forced to say "Bon Journo" in the morning, to the pool life guard that twice accused us of sneaking people into the pool because we were listed as having four people in our group instead of five, (beside the fact that they should have updated their records, shouldn't a life guard be guarding the pool, not counting how many people are standing around it?), to the cracked mosaic tile around the pool that my son cut his foot on, to the questioning of my signature on the breakfast bill because it didn't exactly match my signature on my passport - it felt like they were treating us as criminals. The final straw was on our day of check-out, when they called our taxi too late, in spite of us requesting and confirming our time of departure the night before, causing us to miss our pre-booked and paid for train and connection. It was a final kick out the door! As for the positives, it is one of the few hotels in Rome that has a pool, which turned out to be a lifesaver for us, as it was near record heat during the week we were there. The rooms are nice, and the view from our balcony was breath-taking. The breakfast buffet in the morning was quite good, and we would loved the location - near the Vatican and the Travestere neighborhood. Having said that, I would take good customer service over a good view any day.

Rome was very hot when we visited, plus 40 degrees. The hotel was a real little oasis. Great welcome at the Gran Melia which is located close to the Vatican. Room was probably smaller than expected, but more than comfortable. The en-suite was a bit peculiar with the shower squeezed in the corner by a large bath. The rest of the hotel was great, good service and facilities.

Every summer in Rome, second time at Gran Melia. obviously if we booked the same hotel we stayed last summer it was good. And last time I posted review with complements to this property. Unfortunately our second visit to Gran Melia started with disappointment . I contacted hotel very in advance to inform that my flight from NYC arriving early in a morning and asked for early check in since I am LHW member and returning guest. The answer was " we will do our best " We get to our room only after 3pm! Since we love our room from the previous stay (premium room) this time I booked the same room category . OMG!!! What that gave us! A closet with a view to the wall. Definitely not Premium room category . Not even mentioned the upgrade for LHW After contacting the manager we been moved to the different room, not the room we stayed last year (smaller and les luxury) At least nice view. Also , it was our anniversary and LHW put a note about and sent us a cute congrats . The Gran Melia did not mentioned anything about. New customer relation manager? Everything else was fine . Nice grounds, gorgeous pool, super location.

We stayed in a premium room. Nice room in terms of style but it wasn't very bright. The breakfast was fine but anything cooked is extra. Drinks are expensive . Beer 12 euros , wine I think a similar price and cocktails from memory 22 euros. Staff in the bar area were good. Seems to lack atmosphere but that is I suspect that people eat out and prefer to drink elsewhere as the price doesn't merit the setting etc.Overall poor value.I won't stay here again.