The Chedi Milan Hotel - Milano, Italy     

I staid at the Chedi Milan for more than 60 nights in the past 6 months. It is a beautiful hotel, very stylish, with excellent furniture, a very good breakfast and nice common spaces. Location is not the best if you work in the centre or are in Milan for shopping. Consider that when they say that the hotel is close to the tube, this is not true. There is no tube but a light train (“passante ferroviario”) that runs every 20 minutes (less frequently during weekends) and is at a good 15 min walking from the hotel. So forget about public transportation and be prepared to pay good money in taxi or car rental (and parking! A night in their parking costs 20 euro! Should not be free as they are not able to provide substitute cheaper transportation means and when they are located in an area that is one of the most dangerous for criminality in Milan?). The worst point, however, is the customer service that is really poor and unprofessional. The staff at reception is most of the times useless in providing information on the area, transportation, directions. The excuse “sorry-I-just-recently-moved-to-Milan” that they were often giving, does not sound very professional, though. The staff members treat you like you are making them a favour when you stay in the hotel, and are incapable of being flexible when problems arise. The reservation office more than once created confusion, double bookings and in average was late in answering my requests for booking. The special rate that my company had, was available only when the hotel was basically empty and only too late I understood why. If your rate is not available one day during your stay, they apply the highest rate for the entire week, and do not have the flexibility (or the willing?) to change the rate and apply different rates as every other hotel I know does. This is really ridiculous, and it sounds like they are trying to take improper advantage of their clients. In few cases I had to check out on Saturday and checking back in on Sunday. Being the hotel notoriously empty during the weekend, I hoped I could leave my stuff in the room without the need of checking out and checking in after few hours. Having received a strict no answer from the reception desk, I more than once escalated to the service manager, and another no was given. I am still waiting to understand what was the reason for this, apart creating inconvenience for me and additional costs for them. In a couple of cases they lost my laundry. One swimsuit and few items of underwear disappeared, without the staff even providing apologies or showing a gesture of goodwill for what happened. In several cases, they charged me for laundry that was included in the rate of the room. The most common excuse was that I was giving an item that was different from a “shirt” – the type of item that was included in the rate. And yes, I was giving “t-shirts”, and everybody could tell that a “t-shirt” is cheaper to wash than a shirt! Everybody but the staff of the hotel. The customer service manager arrived at the point of “shouting” at me in front of other clients asking if they had to prepare a laundry sheet that was written only for me because, according to him, I was not understanding the difference between a t-shirt and a shirt… Would you expect this behaviour even in a low category hotel?!? Having the customer service manager acting like that in front of a client for 20 euro that they did not even have the right to claim? And furthermore, with a client who paid at least 9,000 euro in hotel bills? This is ridiculous, and I cancelled all my next reservations after that embarrassing scene. I was not expecting privileges or small welcome gifts every time I was back (although to be honest, other hotels do this all the times!), but a minimum respect and a decent customer service. And I could not find this, I am afraid. Please, get yourself on track, I do not think that a hotel of this level can be so poor in customer service and if you are not improving I am sure that this will reflect in future bookings. At least in mine.

The Chedi is a large boutique hotel a few kilometres north of the city centre. Its location suited me well, and on the whole the hotel itself worked well for me. I had the basic room, rather than the club level, but it was perfectly comfortable and with a better than average bathroom (separate bath and shower). The sink was a huge rectangle affair which looked good, but required an excessive amount of water to fill even to a shallow level. I personally liked the breakfast, no cooked options were on show (maybe they could be ordered?) but the cold buffet was more than adequate and had a few oddities in it too. The check in staff spoke perfectly good English, by the way, probably better than my English actually. The plug in Internet connection was slow, the wifi (code from reception) was fast. At ?10 a day (free for club members) it is relatively good value. Room service is incredibly expensive. In terms of location, actually it is not too bad. Tram line 19 is by the door; tram 1 is close by; Villapizzone rail station less than 5 minutes away. The latter has two benefits - you can get to stations on the Milan Passante (underground train service, not the same as the metro) in just a few minutes. Approx 4 trains an hour. Also you can get directly to and from Malpensa airport via Gallarte station. Gallarte is just 5 km from Malpensa so a cheap taxi ride, then the train from there to Milano Villapizzone takes 30 minutes or so. It also runs later than the Malpensa Express train service which closes down at 10 pm or so. I find the German Bahn.de website best for timings (the site can be switched to English). My glitch with the hotel concerns the automatic wakeup call system based on the TV. The room next to mine was empty but the previous guest had set the alarm, so at 0540 it kicked off, and it goes on a 5 minute musical sequence lasting one hour (at least), getting louder all the time! The next day the same thing happened again, except by 06:15 the room next along joined in too! I suppose I should have complained on day 1....