Ovieto is AMAZING and if you want to stay at "Ripa Medici" it looks amazing too. Sadly, we used the contact form on the host's website, received a follow-up email confirming our stay. Our "reservations" were made in January for an October stay. When we left the train station from Rome we messaged our host with our arrival time. She messaged back saying she had no idea who we were. I sent back screen shots of the confirmation email she had sent us and, low and behold, she had double-booked our room. She felt bad, even picked us up at the train station and took us to a hotel (very old, dated) that had a room available and brought us baked goods from Orvieto. Needless to say, we felt bad that she felt bad HOWEVER, I sure wish we would've made reservations via AirBnb or Booking.com, as Ripa Medici is on both sites. Lesson learned...hopefully someone else won't get double booked.
Posted by
Bend, OR
1082 posts
What’s a trip without something unexpected happening? We always reconfirm our reservations before we leave just for that reason but I can’t think of any of our trips where everything went as planned. Gotta be adaptable. Happy travels!
Posted by
Westford, MA
212 posts
We love Orvieto. You did the right thing by emailing Ripa Medici directly. At a smaller establishment I would expect some correspondence with them a day or two before arrival. If I didn't get it I would reach out to them. AirBnb or booking.com isn't the way to go.
Posted by
OP
43 posts
@Carol, I agree with you in theory, as we have a vacation rental here on the Salish Sea I wanted to save the host from having to pay all the fees that Airbnb, etc. charge her. HOWEVER, we were gone 27 nights and that's a LOT of follow up. I want to assume that if I make a reservation in January (for October) and follow up with at least one more email (with credit card info) that I won't have to stay in a crap hotel room. Especially since we had flown from Seattle to Istanbul to Rome, then train to Orvieto. We were tired travelers, needed to hunker down in our room and were bitterly disappointed in the host's double-booking.