Hotel Isabella

I wouldn’t recommend this hotel again. Was it terrible? No. Was it good? Also No. The rooms are clean for the most part but very austere and not in a chic way. Everything about it is underwhelming and I blame the management mostly. Some basic front desk amenities like help reserving a taxi were refused outright. “We don’t do that” “I cannot help you”. We had dinner reservations at Torre del Saracino (which I can actually recommend) and the front desk just told to ‘wait outside by the taxi stand & hope for luck’. Unacceptable since it is not really a taxi stand as much as a painted parking spot usually covered by large tour busses. Our room overlooked that spot and not a single empty taxi drove by for hours. I was told to take the train to for what is a 20 minute drive that would be 90 minutes on train & required a taxi from the train station AND there would be no train service when dinner ended anyways. Terrible. Luckily our restaurant was able to suggest two different drivers since they actually cared about service and were surprised the hotel was so useless. Help or recommendations for car service is something every hotel I’ve ever stayed at in Italy offered, including elsewhere in the Amalfi coast. Even a suggestion or two would’ve been appreciated—not difficult to share information but it’s easier to tell people “no”. Also, no iron provided in the room for “safety reasons” which reads to me like a cheap owner not wanting to pay insurance. For some reason they think because it’s near Sorrento, that they don’t need to try very hard if at all. The breakfast was massively overcrowded with enormous old folks tour groups to the point it wasn’t even worthwhile. If you expect a group of 60 geriatric white people, make separate breakfast accommodations for them OR reserve a table for the small handful of other guests. It’s really not hard. The pool is shabby with a busted ladder and all of the interior decor looks like it was ordered in bulk from a discount warehouse with the same generic paintings all over the hallways (rooms have no art whatsoever and no nightstand or dresser). Walls are thin and the doors shake anytime someone on your hallway opens their door. Stay somewhere else unless you’re trying to save money. I wasn’t terribly impressed. They clearly do a good deal of business serving big groups but for a family of 4 it was simply not great. Felt more like a motel than a 3 star hotel and a lot of that is likely management being cheap. The staff that wasn’t being useless at the front desk was pleasant. Also, they had a very friendly bartender who served excellent drinks but also served white bread with ketchup and corn and called it food, even for bar snacks, never again. Sad compared to other hotels we ate at including the one just across the street. Would’ve been better to have served nothing (Also I imagine he was given very little budget from management, hence the terrible corn sandwiches). Sufficient, but just barely.

Service was great. Good breakfast, comfortable bed with good ac. Location is a bit off, but there are good restaurants and a beach club quite close as well as a pool in the hotel. This was the most reasonable priced hotel we found.