Review MGallery Habita79 Hotel and Spa, Pompeii IT

This is a brand new hotel, open since beginning of May. You know how poor, generally speaking, the Italian hotels can be, so here it is great to see a new opening, especially under the MGallery brand. It is a very nice hotel with a lot of potential, but a few things are missing in the execution for a perfect experience. It is obvious that they are still in a soft opening mode, but it’s not a reason for some design flaws that shouldn’t be too hard to correct.

It is in a very big massive building from the early 20th century, downtown Pompeii, approximately 300m from the entrance of the archeological site.

I have plenty of SNU to use and all my previous attempts have failed as I had to cancel the stays because of Covid travel restrictions. And it is close to impossible to use SNU in France because most hotels are on the exclusion list (shame…), so this new Italian MGallery seemed to be a good opportunity. To use a SNU, you need to book by phone and I have to say the process was easy and efficient, and the price interesting. For a superior room booked, you get the Junior suite (i.e. 2 levels up).

I checked-in around 11pm and the front desk agent came to meet me at the taxi and called me directly by my name. I was likely the last guest to arrive and I am quite sure the occupancy was very low. Indeed, I barely saw any guests during my stay, in the common parts or at breakfast. The welcome at check-in was very professional, one of the best I had for a while and could be taken as an example of loyalty meaning something. My status was acknowledged and he knew that I was using SNU. The drink voucher was given at check-in.

The common parts are very nice, in a modern Art Déco style.

There are only 3 floors and my room was on the 2nd floor facing the main staircase. 

They gave me another upgrade as clearly the room was a higher Suite category than the Junior one. The room was composed of 3 rooms :

• the living room part with a big sofa, a TV, Nespresso machine, minibar, a guest toilets.
• the bedroom connected to a large dressing room (safety box is there)
• a huge bathroom with double walk-in shower, bathtub, double sink

The welcome amenity was a plate of Italian sweets. A bit meager for a Diamond amenity IMO.

On the plus side :

• The whole room was really large (I would say around 40 sqm). Some of those suites have a terrace, but not mine. Very pleasant to have such a large room. One may find that there’s too much green color, but you get used to it
• good soundproofing (but occupancy was very low, so TBC in regular times)
• comfortable bed
• all amenities you can expect in such an hotel and suite

On the minus side

• very few power ports usable to charge electronic devices. This is really weird in a brand new hotel completely renovated. The website mentions USB ports, but there wasn’t any
• like in more and more hotels, they have a very complicated system for switching on/off lights. Those systems are always driving me mad as you spend 10 min the 1st day to turn off the lights. And you need to be careful as you may also turn off power on the plugs so the following morning your electronic devices are not charged. Why hotels feel obliged to install those systems go beyond logic to me.

Housekeeping was normal (and no need to beg to have it). There was no turndown service.

Overall, the room was very pleasant to stay in.

There are 2 bars/restaurants:

• IL CIRCOLO : on the ground floor. 
• THE ROOF : a rooftop bar & restaurant

Il Circolo is where you have breakfast. Due to Covid, no buffet, you are served from a relatively large choice of hot and cold items. You can give your choices the evening before. The products served were of good quality. This place is open for dinner and is also supposed to be open for lunch until 14:30 as per the website and as per what’s written outside at the street entrance. But, coming back for the archeological site at 13:45, I was told that the kitchen was closed… The front desk later told me that they are not open at lunch at the moment due to low occupancy. Not a real problem as there are plenty of restaurants walking distance, but still…

Il Circolo is open for dinner and this is also where you have to use your drink voucher. It is not usable at the rooftop bar, which is really a policy I don’t understand. At least, if they don’t want to “flood” their rooftop bar with some ALL drink voucher users, they could allow Platinum & Diamond to use it there. That would be a way to give an additional benefit to the top status. The drink voucher is redeemable for the usual drinks; if you take a glass of wine, you can choose from the regular menu. I had a glass of Primitivo, one of my favorite Italian red wine. 

Il Circolo have both indoor and outdoor seating.

I decided to have dinner there and I was surprised to hear that it was fully booked for that evening. But they found a way to accommodate me. I didn’t regret my choice to stay there because the food was super good. The place was indeed full and I believe most of the people were locals and so it seems that they became quickly a place-to-go in town. And the prices were very acceptable (appetizers in the 10-15 EUR range; main courses in the 18-25 EUR range). I had a delicious beef carpaccio to start and codfish 

The Rooftop bar/restaurant is occupying half of the roof surface. The other half is totally unused and I was told it is intended to be used for private parties/events. There’s a lot of seating and the views on the Vesuve volcano and Pompeii town and surrounding mountains are splendid.

You can also see something that looks like a very small pool with loungers and showers, but it was covered and obviously not in use.

This rooftop place opens only from 18:30 which seems a bit weird to me when you know the potential of the place with the stunning view. Nothing prevents you to go earlier but the seatings are not all usable/in place and from 17:00, you see the staff cleaning the place and preparing for the opening so guests are not necessarily welcomed at that time for obvious reasons. So this is one of my main criticism for this hotel: if you want to be at the hotel but not confined to your room (hey…this is south Italy - the weather is great), there is no outdoor place where guests can relax during the day. The only one is the rooftop but this is a bar/restaurant and you need to consume and it is open only from end afternoon. I was very curious about this “pool”., as the weather was hot. The loungers had no mattress on them. I asked the front desk and they said it’s open from 18:30. Going back in the evening at the said time, it was still the same. I asked the waiters and in fact it’s not a pool but just a kind of basin with 20 cm water. and they don’t use it I don’t really understand the concept with the loungers and showers. Just weird.

So I think they really should address the issue of having an outdoor relaxing place for the hotel guests. They have plenty of room for that and it shouldn’t be too difficult.

As said above, the hotel is located 300m away from the entrance of Pompeii ruins and is adjacent to the cathedral on the main square of the city. Just behind the cathedral, you have Pompeii train station (5 min walking from the hotel) with trains coming from/going to Naples (main station). This train runs in South Italian way : 10 min late coming in at Pompeii station, 35 min late arriving in Naples. We stopped forever at several stops with the train driver smoking on the platform during the wait before restarting the train. So definitely take some safety margin, if you have a train, plane, bus to catch in Naples.

I asked for late checkout at 3 pm and it was granted (not a surprise with the low occupancy). I used points to pay part of the bill (it took a little while but everything was OK). I gave my Amex as guarantee at booking and at check-in but I could not use it to pay the cash part of the  bill because “they have a problem with Amex” :(

So I needed either to withdraw cash at an ATM or use another type of card. Not acceptable IMO.

Overall, it is a very nice brand new hotel but they need to address a few issue and particularly having some available outdoor place during the day for guests outside the bars and restaurants. Definitely a nice addition to the MGallery network.