Grand Hotel Olympic

This hotel is not worthy of 4 stars; it was the worst choice of our trip to Rome. The first day, the bed broke as soon as we got in. They had to come and fix it at 10 pm, hammering it in—we couldn't believe it! The facilities were very run down, and the wardrobe door was broken. The shower barely had any water pressure. It was very noisy, and the breakfast was meager.

the place is great the rooms are very comfortable and the breakfast service is very plenty and has a lot of variety, the people were very kind and i would stay here again if i came back to rome we love Marta shes great she should get a raise!!

This hotel was selected for a number of reasons. Firstly its location then facilities and finally price. It is situated on the west side of the Tiber, close to the Vatican, but also a short distance from a bridge across the river. You can easily walk into the main centre and find tourist attractions like the Piazza Navona, Pantheon and Trevi fountain. If you want to get to, for example, the Colosseum or Forum then the Metro is close by and taxis are not too expensive if there are four in your group (like us). I’d suggest using the Freeform app to book one not Uber. In the immediate area there are plenty of cafes, restaurants (not too touristy) and little bars. The shops are many and varied if that’s what you want. Now the interesting part, the hotel. It is not very big and has a 24 hour reception although the one time we needed to contact reception from our room outside of normal hours they never answered the phone! When I went down to see what was the problem the receptionist was sat reading her phone. I asked her if the phone was working and she looked sheepish and checked it. It was apparently! Forget room service because they obviously don’t have any. You can’t even get a bottle of water from them. It is advertised as having a bar and also mini bars in the rooms. It has neither. The bar is an empty space in a room near reception and the rooms only have a tiny fridge. Other issues we and people in our group experienced included: Room keys continually failing to open the door. This was so bad we asked them to reprogram it every time we walked in to avoid having to come downstairs. No hot water for showers on so many occasions that I got the manager to move us to another room. Listening in on conversations I conclude this is a widespread problem. The final straw was when they said the electricity would be switched off from 10pm to 6am! No heating, lighting or lifts. When I said this wasn’t safe in the event of fire (did the fire alarm system work? They said “we think so” lol). We came back early to avoid this potential disaster and get up the five floors in the lift only to discover the power went off 1:30am them came in at 4:30am then off again and only came on properly at 5:30am. We were woken up by this so got a very bad sleep. This was quite literally a disaster waiting to happen and should be reported to the authorities. A number of other annoyances need to be considered before you book. The hotel is close to a busy road with cars 24 hours a day and also suffers from very noisy people going home from the bars in the area. Even on the fourth floor (the room we were moved to) it kept us awake most of the night. We bought ear plugs in the end! The hotel also has large groups of schoolchildren using it with the inevitable noise at night. The rooms themselves are very dated and lacking in furniture. They were clean but our bathroom had mould in corners and stains in the toilet bowl. One good point is the breakfast but I’m afraid I will avoid this hotel like the plague for the above reasons. Continually being told by the staff “it isn’t our problem it’s out of our control” isn’t good enough.