Hotel Donatello

Great hotel in Florence! 24hr front desk, great breakfast with plenty of options, beautiful green space in the interior, plus nice sized room. Right by a bus stop and park. Mile walk to the Uffizi gallery.

The hotel has a lot of charm and the rooms are all unique. It’s in a great location and is close to excellent restaurants and main attractions. There’s a beautiful garden courtyard and staff was friendly. Adrian, who runs the front desk over night, was definitely the highlight of our stay. We were there with a school group and he looked out for our students overnight. He was super friendly and gave us great advice on where to visit while in Florence. Amazing hospitality!! Thanks, Adrian!

Checked in on 27 Sep 2022 around 3:00pm local time Triple Room (Room no. 232 on third floor) Hotel Donatello - Confirmation No: 66097 Note: Originally booked with ******* for stay in May 2020 but hotel issued Voucher No. 25 so for this stay we booked directly with Hotel Donatello Firenze using the voucher they issued. PROS: Very good location, Quiet area, Spacious triple room. Lift CONS: Very RUDE staff at reception during our check-in, Reception-controlled air conditioning, Only issues one (1) key card for a triple room. During our check-in on 27 Sep 2022 around 3pm, I was smiling greeting the staff with "Buongiorno" and handed my passport but we were completely shocked with his response which was something to the effect of - we are expecting you, who else could it be, you paid low price. And so we felt very unwelcome, uncomfortable and confused, I asked what he meant by it. He took out their records and showed how much we paid per day and said something to the effect of - it's like you only paid for one person per day with the amount that you paid for your stay. I said we paid the correct full amount indicated on your website while arranging the booking with hotel staff (Paolo) in May 2022. The rude staff said it's not right, then he asked how much we would have paid for a room with the same number of days and people in our city, to which I replied - "I don't know" (my thoughts to myself - you can't compare apples and orange). Then I asked him, "What do you want from us? Do you need us to pay more?" and he replied "NO." So I told him, we actually booked this stay on May 14, 2022 and paid the correct amount as indicated on your website and confirmed by your colleague, so I do not see any issues here and we do not have any fault here. He proceeded to tell us our room number and handed out one keycard. He did not offer any apologies at all for his very rude behavior which is completely UNACCEPTABLE. We were really tired and did not ask for the manager to complain. During our stay, the aircon in our room was unable to cool the room - it felt a bit hot but we did not complain at the reception anymore because we tried to avoid dealing with him as much as possible ... still reeling from he shockingly rude and unwelcome treatment we got during check-in. On our last day, we found out that reception controls the aircon and we needed to call reception for adjustments - see attached hotel manual. After a day or 2, we requested for additional keycard from reception as it is inconvenient to only have 1 key card for 3 persons but we were told they only issue 1 per room for security reasons. Due to our bad experience during check-in, we will not stay again at Hotel Donatello Firenze for our next visit to Florence.