Universo

Don't stay here unless you want your stuff stolen

My fiancee and I traveled Europe for 49 days after graduating from college. This trip took a great deal of planning as we planned everything out ourselves down to bus transportation. Trip Advisor was very helpful in pointing us in the right direction for hotels except Hotel Universo in Florence, Italy. We stayed in a lot of hotels and this one was by far the worst. It had nothing to do with the room, the cleanliness, or anything like that. We arrived at the hotel this past July during what seemed like the hottest time of year. The air conditioner our first night there was working poorly and could not be adjusted. We could here it run but the room was still hot. The next day after walking around all day in 105 degree heat we came back to our hotel and it was sweltering. We called down to see if the hotel staff was aware the A/C was broken and we were told that it would be resolved within the hour. After an hour passed and me and my fiancee could not stand the heat. She went down to the reception to see what was going on around 7pm. She waited down there about 4.5 hours with other guests that were outraged by the situation until someone came and they could not fix the problem. Now that it is 11:30 we are all finally provided a complementary room for the night at another hotel free of charge. It is 1 in the morning before we arrive to sleep for the night. Since we read all of the horror stories of things getting stolen from people, every hotel we stayed in we always left the "do not disturb sign" up. We walk back from the complementary hotel the next morning to the Hotel Universo which is kind of ridiculous after we waited in the lobby for a total of 5.5 hours the night before and didn't get to sleep until 1am. We walk to our room to find the do not disturb sign off the door and our room made up. At first we don't think anything of it but the next day my fiancee is missing one of her undergarments. We left everything at the Hotel Universo but the clothes on our back so our first instinct is to check the room inside out from top to bottom. After not finding it we think that maybe it was picked up in the bedding. We call down to reception and are told they will check laundry and call back in a half hour. One hour later we call back because we're just waiting for a response and it is not to be found with no apology offered. We keep calm and go buy her a new undergarment as we packed only enough clothes to fit in a backpack and she has just enough clothes to make it by. The next morning as we are sitting in the hotel watching TV our door suddenly opens and a shocked maid quickly pulls the do not disturb sign off the door. Her face looks surprised to see us in the room and we find it very odd that she would open the door without knocking at all. Shortly after this incident occurs my fiancee finds that another undergarment and an expensive shirt are gone. We immediately know that all three items had been stolen. My fiancee becomes irate as anyone would. This leads us to believe the maid had entered without knocking to help herself to more of my fiancees clothing. My fiancee immediately goes downstairs to bring it to the attention of the receptionist. He tells us that his "maids are honest" and we should check the room and that we probably misplaced it ourselves. We would not have accused anyone without first making sure of this. He offers no apology again and says all we can do is file a police report. It is the worst feeling to feel ignored as if no one is willing to help resolve the issue. At no point did he try to make it right by asking his staff about the issue. We tried to contact the main hotel manager Claudio Delli with no response as well as Laura Parato the assistant manager. We contacted them with regards to our situation on July 18th, 2011 they have made no attempt to recognize or apologize for our losses. I highly recommend you do not stay at this hotel or the Hotel Rosso 23, Hotel Balestri, Hotel L'Orologio, Hotel Santa Maria Novella, or the Hotel Villa Cora as these are owned by the same group. We feel in every incident their hotel staff acted very unprofessionally. They also neglected to take responsibility for the issues we presented to them. We were made to feel as though our problem didn't matter. This has been the worst experience I have had at any hotel. It's a shame.
I only wish now that all of you will take our advice and that this will not happen to anyone else.