Six Senses Rome

This place charges around 1400€ per night, the hotel chain brand name exudes such price point but this felt more like a 300€ per night stay. The room is tiny for 1400€ per night, and when I came back to the room one day I see a cleaner’s sponge on my sink. I threw it away but an hour later when I was in my pajamas, a cleaner opens my doors without knocking, goes into my bathroom to retrieve his sponge from the trash. So thanks, for 1400€ per night anyone can come into my room whenever they feel like. Downstairs in the breakfast area outside, it looks like a good idea to sit among trees, but then during breakfast you just get whacked by the tree branches. There was pretty much only one server working the entire room, they got my order wrong, and once placing my food down they never came around again even though I wanted another cup of coffee. The elevators are interesting - they’re set so deep into the wall that when the elevator arrives, you can’t even see which one is open. It doesn’t have any lights on the wall to indicate which one you can use. At least not when I was there. Brilliant design. Downstairs Six Senses Rome has their highly touted Roman Baths. When I arrived, there were cups, flip flops, and towels strewn everywhere like some people had a giant pool party. Very premium elegant experience, yeah right.

We had planned to stay at this hotel but, unfortunately, were robbed just before our trip, forcing us to cancel. While we fully understand that the hotel has a cancellation policy, the way the staff handled our situation was incredibly disappointing. We reached out to explain the circumstances and hoped for some understanding or at least a more sympathetic response. Instead, the hotel staff were incredibly rude, dismissive, and showed no compassion whatsoever for our unfortunate situation. Despite not being able to make it to the hotel at all, we were still charged in full for all three nights. We were already dealing with a stressful situation, and the hotel's lack of empathy only made things worse. Given the way we were treated, we will never consider staying here in the future and strongly advise others to be cautious about the customer service. Compassion and understanding go a long way, and sadly, this hotel demonstrated neither.

I always make a point of waiting until I've checked out to form a full impression and write a review, but this hotel is just so bad in pretty much every respect that I think it's already beyond redemption at this point. I'll start with the design: it photographs much, much better than it looks in person, and is just so distinctly un-Italian that it doesn't feel like you're in Rome at all. It's like it's trying to be Tulum in the middle of Italy, for some strange reason, and I find it incredibly sterile and unappealing. The restaurant in particular has a canteen-like feel, and is (unsurprisingly) totally empty on a Saturday night while every other restaurant I tried in Rome was packed. It's so unappealing that I was just going to write-off the Amex credit I had to spend at the hotel and go and get dinner elsewhere, if not for the fact that the hotel was the only place I could find at short notice! How was the restaurant? Awful. Terrible food, terrible "fresh fruit juice" (not even sure what it was), terrible service. The kind of service where you have to dance a jig to get noticed because the waitresses aren't paying attention at all, and then when they do finally notice you, they tell you they'll be "just a moment" and make you wait another 10 minutes. For desert I just ordered some seasonal fruit, and even the fruit was terrible quality. I probably sound like I'm just looking for reasons to complain, and I really wish that were the case, but alas everything was just consistently dreadful. Also: when I did a tour of the hotel, the receptionist told me they have a rooftop bar. For some very strange reason, in order to get there, you have to either call the reception for them to come and let you up, or go down to the reception to be escorted. When I asked why this was the case, they explained that it's in order to give hotel guests priority to go to the rooftop bar (!?) What am I missing? If the idea is to give hotel guests priority, then how does making your roomy not swipe the rooftop bar accomplish that? But anyway, I got the reception to swipe me up, only for the hostess up there to tell me that the bar is "too busy" for me, due to not one, but two private events. Fantastic. Want to call the reception? I literally could not figure out how to do it on the room phone, to the point that I instead googled the hotel's number to dial it on my mobile. When I dialled the hotel number, I got an automated message saying the number was not in service (!?) And yes, I checked twice, and yes, I used the Italian country code correctly. The number simply wasn't working. And all for the bargain price of... $1,600+ per night. My room, despite being an apparent "triple upgrade" due to my Amex benefits, is just average, so the notion of paying anywhere near that price for a room worse than this is just crazy. I have been to a lot of hotels, and this is up there with one of my least favourite anywhere in the world. Dreadful, avoid like the plague. A total waste of money.

The Six senses hotel in Rome delivers luxury amenities as expected, but our experience was ruined by a subpar Vatican tour arranged by the concierge. Despite the hotel's overall quality, this tour fell short of 5-star standards. We went through long lines and overcrowded spaces in the intense heat, feeling rushed throughout. The guide seemed ill-equipped to manage these challenges effectively, not worth the price paid.

This weekend we had dinner at the Bivium in the Sisx Senses. The hotel is a true Oasis away from the heat and bustling streets surrounding the hotel. We were warmly received by Melissa who showed us to our table and Atik provided excellent, knowledgeable and attentive service, he really is a super nice person. David the Manager attentively asked about our wellbeing. The Fusili with Gamberini were excellent as was the salted Pistachio ice cream. A highly recommended experience and we will for sure come back very soon!