My wife and I booked Hotel del Mare as an airport hotel so that we could rest a bit before flying back to Canada after a wonderful three weeks of honeymooning in Italy.
We had tried to book the hotel's shuttle bus to pick us up at FCO after taking the train there. I had sent an email to them the night before we were to arrive, but I didn't hear anything back by the time we were leaving Florence the following morning. Before we left we got the very kind staff at our hotel in Florence to try to help arrange it, but between the language barrier and/or Hotel del Mare having rules about only picking up people flying into FCO, it didn't work out. We just ended up getting a cab (25 euro).
The location of the hotel has an unbeatable view of the beach, which is just across the street. The neighbourhood feels like it would be pretty rundown if it didn't have airport and beach goers supporting it, but it certainly didn't seem dangerous. The beach itself is fairly long, and is made up of a series of man made coves and breakwaters. In typical Italian style, it was a bit dirty with way too much litter, at least the public sections we were on.
Hotel del Mare isn't huge, with just two storeys, but it has a nice rooftop patio with about a dozen cabana chairs and even a small hot tub.
Our room was a decent size and the bed was the Italian "queen-sized", aka. two twins pushed together. However, the AC was all but non-functioning. After a couple hours it hadn't cooled down the room so we talked to the front desk staff about it. After they investigated, they couldn't get anyone to come by at that point in the evening, and we were SOL. There were no rooms that we could move to, but we were able to get an old fan from the front desk that combined with an open window to keep the room survivable, if not very comfortable.
The front desk staff was really cool about letting us print off our boarding passes. They didn't have a business centre, but just let me use their computer for a few minutes.
Breakfast was served just off the main entryway and was what by then had become a familiar sight: cornetti, fruit, yogurt, some sweets, and cheese, cold cuts and bread for making sandwiches. They did have a panini press for your own use, which was kind of neat.
We scheduled our shuttle ride the night before (18 euro, paid in cash to the driver), and it was a fairly quick drive there.
It certainly wasn't the highlight of our trip, but the nice, helpful staff kept it from being a disaster, so that's worth something. read more