Primavera - Stresa, Italy 

Stayed at the Primavera for 3 nights in April 08, having made the booking in January. Shortly before we flew out to Italy, I noticed that there were now 2 reviews on TripAdviser where people had been messed around by this hotel. On arrival at the Primavera, we were told that our room was not available, as the previous occupant had been taken ill and could not be moved. The receptionist wanted us to go to their "sister hotel" - wherever that was. We told her we did not believe this story, and asked to speak to the manager, or a doctor who could explain to us what the health issues were with this hotel guest. If this person was so ill, surely he/she should be in hospital? The receptionist tried to insist that we go to the other hotel, we refused to budge, mentioned the reviews on this site, and eventually she rang through to the manager. I didn't understand everything she said to him, but she used the word "brutta" which I took to mean that we were being unpleasant and not going along with her story. When she finished on the phone, she told us that, as there was a large party of 20 people arriving later that day, the only room she could offer us was a "very small room". We had a look at it, and it wasn't that small, so we decided to take it. It was the smallest room on the floor, and the only one without a balcony, but we weren't bothered about that. Who knows what room we might have ended up with in another hotel that we knew nothing about? I think what is going on here is that this hotel takes large group bookings for several rooms, and any previous bookings for just the one room get shunted off to another hotel to make way for the large group. The hotel is also very noisy. Although it is in a pedestrianised area, it is opposite a bar which stays open until 1am, with a lot of noise going on. Then from around 6.30am, there are vehicle deliveries, glass recycling, etc. I would not recommend the Primavera to anyone.

I had booked a room and had confirmed reservations in Feb 2006. We were supposed to stay there Sept 9, 2006. We arrived in the mid afternoon and walked from the train station to the hotel with our luggage. We were told that the hotel was booked and the room we were supposed to have still had someone's possessions in it. The hotel management said that the previous occupant had been taken to a hospital with chest pains and was probably having a heart attack. They put us up at Hotel Boston, where we had one of the worst hotel experiences of our lives. See my Hotel Boston review posted in Oct 2006. We believed their story until today, when another TripAdvisor member noticed my review at Hotel Boston and the previous review here at Primavera and brought it to my attention that there have been multiple "heart attacks" at Primavera. Now maybe Hotel Primavera has had really bad luck with this and it's a coincidence, but there's already two reported instances of this same story- how many instances have gone unreported? Stresa was really busy the night we were there and I'm guessing they shipped us off to the other hotel because we had a low 95 euro reservation rate and they could get someone else in there for more money.