lwildernorva

This hotel is very nice with one small caveat, noted below. It's beautiful in a West Elm/Aloft kind of way (if you don't like that look, your opinion about this hotel will vary from mine): lots of brown and olive hues in the decorating scheme, a reasonably sized room at about 225 square feet, bare wood floors in the bedrooms and bamboo floors in the bathrooms, the best designed bathroom in and around the Rome Choice properties (and the best outside of the Dublin IFSC that I've seen for a European Choice property), very subdued modern lighting, and a small patio (we were on the first floor, room 22) outside the sliding glass doors with a retractable awning. This picture, taken from a Google review of the hotel, is very representative of the room my sister and I had:




The caveat: the hotel is not on the Fiumicino airport property and although just off the end of one of the runways, at some remove from the passenger terminals. The hotel is instead located in the small town of Fiumicino. It's not a long drive, maybe fifteen minutes in bad traffic, and transport from the hotel to the airport was excellent for us--a shuttle with about twelve leather seats. Make reservations for a shuttle ride when you check in--as you'll see, it's unlikely this shuttle operates on the same set schedule every day. The shuttle to the airport operates without a charge, and we gave the driver a five euro tip.

Getting to the hotel from the airport, however, is an entirely different story. The shuttle has no Choice/Comfort markings, does not make regular stops at the airport (only stops to drop off departing passengers on the upper level of the terminals rather than looping back around to the lower level to pick up arriving passengers), and the advice I received when talking over the telephone with the clerk at the front desk at the hotel, combined with a bizarre experience attempting to locate the Fiumicino Airport Shuttle, which she instructed me to take to airport stop 19, would not have delivered me to the hotel.

I'll try to keep this short, but I waited at the shelter marked as an Airport Shuttle stop, where there is an electronic sign advising you of the impending arrival of the shuttle (five minutes, two minutes, one minute) and then a notification that the shuttle is arriving. Getting on the bus that stopped as this message displayed (with no bus behind in sight) proved futile as this bus was not the Airport Shuttle and never stopped at stop 19. Stop 19 is nowhere near the location of this hotel, and I must assume that the front desk intended to send their shuttle to this location to meet the Airport Shuttle--I'll never know. Save yourself an hour and take a cab to the hotel; given that this is Italy, I won't try to estimate the cost, but our cost was 10 euro per person. It’s worth the cost, especially if you arrive late at night. It's also worth it to have a printed version of your reservation for the cab driver or to memorize the address of the hotel. Our cab driver seemed somewhat unfamiliar with the hotel but knew the way to the street where it's located.

The front desk person, with whom I had spoken earlier, was very friendly and spoke relatively good English but was insistent upon learning that my group was two and not three, that we were not getting the triple I had booked. That's a shame, because from my experience with the room given, I think the triple would have been a treat--apparently, it's a two-level room with a single bed on one level and a king-sized bed on the other. The beds were comfortable, and the shower pressure and water temperature were excellent--no issues with fluctuations in the temperature and the shower handle was not unusually sensitive as at many of these European properties. Staff interactions were good. The common areas at the hotel and our room were clean and well maintained. There is a small computer in the lobby where you can print boarding passes--the printer is located behind the front desk, and the front desk clerk brought out the passes as soon as they were printed.

The neighborhood is fine but is smack dab in the middle of a residential street. Given the condition of the hotel, the building looks relatively new and built for the purpose of being a hotel. No safety issues on a Sunday night but not many restaurants nearby. There's a small promenade along a fishing harbor several blocks away, and that's where I walked for dinner, eating at a seafood restaurant, L’Antico Molo (The Old Pier). It was a swing and a miss--the risotto frutti di mare I ordered was instead just rice cooked in a regular way, no creaminess to it, while a shrimp cocktail I had as an appetizer had a gloppy pink sauce that coated the shrimp.

The hotel has only the standard Choice breakfast area, located at the front of the hotel, just off the lobby. Plenty of bright light, and an overall pleasant way to start the day. No cooked options, not even hard-boiled eggs, but some hams and cheeses, pastries, cereals, toast, fruits, coffee, tea, juices, and milk.

As I mentioned, I really like this property, but I'd like it even more if they ran the shuttle to pick up passengers at the airport without need to use the Airport Shuttle--even if you had to call the hotel to make the arrangements. I suspect that would be impractical since the hotel is not large and probably can't justify the expense of a vehicle and a driver constantly on standby--our transportation back to the airport was probably part of a varying schedule determined by how many people need a ride to the airport each day.

It’s a great redemption at 8K points, and, just based on the décor of the room and the hotel itself, I’d certainly consider paying as much as 150 euro or 20K points. The town of Fiumicino was pleasant enough (apparently a small seaside resort for locals), but once you leave the hotel, you’ll probably need to know Italian more so than you would if you stayed in Rome, and there is no reason for a tourist to spend time there unless doing a trip of several months. Given the need to go back to the airport to pick up the Leonardo Express and the thirty-minute trip from the airport to Roma Termini, this hotel isn't a realistic option to serve as a base for touring Rome.

The hotel isn’t completely useless as an airport hotel, but after my stay, I felt I wouldn’t have been inconvenienced if I had instead stayed in Rome for another night, had dinner at one of the restaurants in town, and then taken the Leonardo Express to the airport the following morning. For me, an airport hotel must provide convenient transportation to and from the airport; unfortunately, the Choice Hotel Roma Fiumicino Airport fails on that last point.