Maison Matilda - Luxury Rooms & Breakfast

Upon arrival, we rang the bell at the locked door for 20 minutes and tried contacting the host through WhatsApp. Finally rang the house (casa) bell and got checked in. We were told to contact through WhatsApp for additional service. Nice room, but after returning from a walk and dinner, realized that there was no hot water (we were not told this at check in). Again, tried contacting the host through WhatsApp several times without response. Went outside and rang the house bell again. The host's son made a show of not being aware of the problem. (After talking to another couple, we realized that this was not true.) At this point, it was too late to get another room. The host's son said he would contact Mr. and Mrs. Smith to provide compensation for us. After 2 weeks with no further communication, we contacted Hyatt and were told that the host had given us 2 splits of Prosecco, breakfast (which was already included in the price), and a ride to the train station (which was within walking distance), so we were offered 2000 points in compensation. In my opinion, this is not adequate for ZERO hot water that we were not informed about at check-in. Poor customer service by Hyatt and extremely bad service at Maison Matilda.

The room I was allocated had a heavy stench of cigarettes. Viviana, the Manager/owner, acknowledged the stench, but either had not checked the room before arrival or chose to leave the stench unaddressed. The room was very dark, with almost no natural light; the windows were opened onto walls. There wasn’t a proper closet for clothes and the bathroom had a low ceiling and no shower. The breakfast room was dark and dingy and the furniture upholstery had holes. Parking was hard to access and in tandem with two other cars making entering and exiting cumbersome and difficult. Overall, a very unsatisfactory experience. Even if the stench were set aside, the darkness and gloominess of the property, plus worn out furniture and poor facilties made Maison Matilda uncomfortable, unwelcoming and overpriced. The awkward parking arrangements added to the property’s drawbacks.

The Matilda calls itself a luxury boutique hotel designed to ensure comfort and guarantee a once in a lifetime experience. Fortunately we only stayed one night as there was absolutely no way that it lived up to the promises on its website. It was certainly a once in a lifetime experience but not one we would want to repeat. We had agreed a check in time and arrived a little early but were sent away and told to come back later. The air conditioning wasn’t working and apparently hadn’t been for several days so the place was hot, we tried to speak to the owner/manager about this but she was too busy to speak to us. Instead we were told the room would cool down soon and provided with 2 cold drinks and a faulty fan. The room didn’t cool down and nobody else from the hotel bothered to speak to us, in fact the place appeared to be deserted – there were certainly no members of staff anywhere to be seen. We spent a virtually sleepless night in a very warm room, opening the windows simply let in mosquitoes and a lot of noise from the street. We had to leave by 7.30 the next morning and asked for an early breakfast, ok we didn’t give the required 24 hours notice but were told they could arrange something. However, again we heard nothing further about this although eventually we did find somebody in the kitchen the next morning but by then it was too late. We are elderly and there was nobody to help get our luggage down 2 flights of stairs as the Hotel doesn’t have a lift. We left the keys and went, very relieved to be going. As is often the case with these so called small luxury boutique hotels it was more style than substance and didn’t actually deliver on its promises. We made a formal complaint to the Booking Agency and were promised a response within 5 working days but despite a reminder heard nothing more.