Hotel Dei Cavalieri - Milano, Italy 

This hotel is in a good location, the room I had was recently renovated and was clean and smart. It had all the standard mod cons for a hotel of its class. Check-in staff were friendly and efficient. I paid ?179 for a single room which I thought for Milan wasn't too bad. The major flaw in the hotel for me was that I was given a non-smoking room but it clearly had guests who had been smoking there. The room smelled really badly of stale smoke, I called and asked to change room and was told quite bluntly that there were no other rooms available and given no apology for it whatsoever. Unfortunately I had checked in at about 11.30pm so I had no option but to stay there. Apart from this I enjoyed a nice breakfast the next morning and efficient check-out staff. However, the way they dealt with the room issue would put me off booking there again.

Once again we selected Dei Cavalieri based on a Tripadvisor review, however this time we were not so satisfied, just OK. The hotel was just 5 minutes walking from the Duomo which was convenient, the staff was kind and helpfull but besides the receptionists nobody else spoke any english at all. With our poor knowledge of Italian we were struggling to comunicate during breakfast, which by the way was poorer than expected. The rooms although recently renovated and quite modern smelled damp, as well as the bathroom which was luxurius and clean otherwise. The mini bar was not checked on a daily basis and upon our departure we discovered that several items were not opened by us. The hotel didn't ask us to pay for them but we didn't feel certain they believed us... As a general impression it was just ok for a short visit, buisness trip or shopping spree to Milan, but we would like to try someplace else next time.