"My Recommendation: STAY AWAY FROM THIS HOTEL.
I rarely take the time to write negative reviews about hotels given that I usually set my expectations quite low these days, but this was really one of the most terrible and shocking experiences I have ever had in a hotel establishment, and I travel A LOT.
Our stay was in May 2025, and I’ve spent the past few months trying to get in contact with someone from the head/corporate Best Western office to talk about this with. Now there’s a lot of detail below but here’s a quick summary of our experience at Hotel Canada in Rome (one important fact to note is that we booked our stay through Expedia):
1) Originally booked and assigned a Junior Suite at check-in that had an electrical issue, causing safety concerns and an extremely disruptive noise at night that made it impossible to sleep
2) After notifying staff of the issue, our room was downgraded to a Comfort Room, as the hotel staff said we couldn't stay in the Junior Suite due to the electrical issue and no other rooms were available
3) Staff promised to look into a refund for the difference in room rates, but proceeded to be dishonest and try to manipulate their way out of it
4) We were not allowed back into our originally booked Junior Suite room (due to the electrical issue), and we were not offered a refund on the room rate difference
5) Staff lied to Expedia saying that they never changed our room, despite us having photo evidence of the contrary
6) Staff (and especially the floor manager) were generally quite rude, disrespectful, unhelpful, and again, took to lying with such ease that it made me quite uncomfortable reflecting back on it
We arrived in late May for a few nights and we had booked one of their Junior Suites (separate seating area and bedroom). Overall the room looked like it did in the photos which was good and was quite spacious, but it had an electrical issue that the staff neglected to mention/fix before our stay. The reason I suspect they knew about the issue beforehand is:
1) The electricity was turned completely off when we arrived (we had to ask a staff member to help us turn it on)
2) The staff had admitted to us later on (when we were changing rooms) that there was an electrical issue that maintenance was looking into for this room (but yet for some reason they still booked us into it even though they knew...? strange)
The electrical issue was the LED lights in the bedroom, which basically made this extremely sharp and piercing clicking noise at random, even when the lights were turned off. It happened every 1 to 3 minutes without warning, and sometimes would go off in a flurry of loud clicks. It made it IMPOSSIBLE to sleep on our first night there (I still have nightmares about that noise sometimes...it was really bad). I had hoped the noise would go away on it’s own but it continued throughout the night until about 3:00AM, and as a result, we didn’t get much sleep that night due to the noise.
The next morning, we informed the front desk of the noise. The manager didn't believe us. She said that next time we need to let them come into the room to hear it otherwise they can't do anything about it. I asked if there were any renovations or issues with the room that would cause the noise. She immediately (almost cutting me off) said "no, nothing, the room is fine". I decided to leave it and hope that the noise would be gone when we arrived back that evening.
After a day out exploring Rome, we arrived back to the hotel at around 5:00PM and the noise was still there. We came down to let the front desk staff know so they could come check it out this time for themselves. The manager was not around but another individual was at the front desk and after playing him a recording of the noise, he told me he'll come up to our room shortly. What was strange was that without being prompted, he seemed to focus on trying to reassure me that the room was safe to stay in (he repeated this a few times in our short conversation). The reason I found it strange was that I wasn't worried about safety per se at the moment, more just about trying to get a good night's rest in our hotel room. He repeated that the room should be safe, and that he'll come up in a moment.
After ~20 minutes, he came into our room and immediately said that we shouldn't stay in this room for the remainder of our trip. The reason? The first was the noise; he compared the randomness and piercing nature of the clicking noise at nighttime to "Chinese waterdrop torture" (and it really was that bad), and told us that the room is definitely not fit to sleep in. Secondly, he said the noise was due to an electrical issue that maintenance had flagged that was causing the LED lights in the room to make the sharp and piercing clicking noise. The first thought I had was why didn't the manager/staff know about this? I thought back to our arrival and how the electricity was turned off in our room; it made me wonder if this was the reason why it was turned off? Especially with the staff trying to reassure my it was safe despite me not saying anything about it; had the staff had known about the electrical issue before we checked in? It's hard to know as this is all speculation, but either way, the staff member did emphasize to us that we shouldn't stay in this room.
We ended up being downgraded to a regular Comfort Room for the remainder of our stay (the room was about half the size and had no separate sitting area/bedroom). I had asked to see if there was a way for us to be compensated for the downgrade, and the staff member said he’ll talk to the owners.
Now, a lot happened afterwards, including the staff being openly dishonest and manipulative and trying to avoid providing any sort of compensation for the downgrade, but I’ll neglect providing full details to respect the privacy of the people involved.
All in all, we had to fight to get compensation from the Hotel Canada staff, which was quite surprising and disappointing given the situation. We ended up getting our breakfast paid for (and some vouchers for a few free drinks at the bar) which was nice, but it was only around 70 EUR total for the breakfast (more if we include the drink vouchers, but we don't drink and we let the staff know that so the vouchers were left unused). This is compared to the price difference for the Junior Suite vs. the Comfort Room we were downgraded to which would be closer to 150 - 170 EUR total based off of the rates around that time.
Now the hundred-plus dollar difference doesn’t matter too much to me, but what I find most shocking and disappointing is the way the staff handled the matter. When I asked about the compensation again later in our stay, the staff said that “the owners are okay with it but that it’s Expedia’s fault that they couldn't offer us a refund” (I had booked this stay through Expedia). I decided to contact Expedia to see if that was true, and this had to be the most shocking part of the experience. When Expedia contacted the Hotel Canada staff to inquire about a refund for the room downgrade on our behalf, the Hotel Canada staff blatantly lied to Expedia, saying that they never downgraded our room, despite the fact that I had photo evidence and documentation that showed that they did in fact downgrade us. Again, I have email and documented proof of this whole ordeal but I won’t post it here out of respect for the people involved.
Ultimately, I don’t care that much about the money in this situation, it’s more the principle at play here. I get that they are trying to run a business in a tough market, but to witness the staff going to such lengths to mislead and lie in order to avoid compensating guests for a downgraded room was quite shocking, disappointing, and disheartening. Also, I don’t think they should have put us in that room in the first place if they knew there was an electrical issue. And lastly, at any point in time they could have just been honest and said they didn’t want to offer us a refund. They didn't need to lie to us/Expedia about it…
I had inquired about speaking to the owners directly about this each day of our stay, and every time the staff had said that the owners will be there “tomorrow”. They never were. On our final night I had made a request specifically to the front desk to speak to the owners on our morning of checking out, and the staff said the owners will “for sure be there”. Of course, on the morning of our check out day, the owners were conveniently “not around”, despite the fact that I had been promised that they would be there.
There’s a lot of details that I left out but I feel like this is a lot of information already. I hope everyone can see the problematic nature of the staff's behaviour throughout this whole ordeal. I would have appreciated it more if they had just told me from the start that they didn't want to offer me a refund for the difference in the room rate, instead of them blatantly lying and trying to manipulate us. I recognize this is a business and the hotel is trying to maximize their profits from operations, but at the very least, there should be some sense of integrity and character when dealing with customers. We are humans after all. This is no way to be treated.
I also hope that from reading this review, folks can take a second thought about staying here. There are plenty of other great hotel establishments around the area and within Rome. My recommendation is to go to one of those instead.
To the hotel’s credit, we did get our breakfast compensated and they did offer us the free drink vouchers for the bar. Additionally, the staff working at the breakfast buffet were quite lovely so that was a huge plus (one of the waiters remembered my coffee order by the second morning which was really cool). But ultimately, I don’t feel like any of that even remotely makes up for our horrendous experience and the extremely questionable behaviour of the Hotel Canada staff.
Some other things to note about our stay:
Pros:
- Location wise: there are a few restaurants nearby and it’s close to the main train station which is good
- Breakfast staff were generally really great, decent selection of food available
- Free water fountain with sparkling water option which was nice
- Bathrooms were quite spacious and newly renovated
Cons:
- Soundproofing: basically non existent in the hotel (but I don't think there’s much they can do about that, it’s an older building). If you’re a light sleeper, it’ll definitely be a challenge in this space. I could literally hear conversations on the ground floor even though I was up on the 4th floor.
- Room Design: there was a non-optional night light in our room haha (see picture attached). I had to try and cover it up with a towel at night. You could of course take the hotel card out and just deal with not having any power in your room, but with the summer heat, I’m not sure if that’s really an option…Really strange design choice.
- And of course, all of the issues mentioned above regarding the staff at the establishment
Again, I have never gone to such lengths to share a review of this nature, but this really is just such appalling behaviour from the staff that I had to take the time to express my thoughts and feelings. I definitely won’t be going back to this hotel when I visit Rome again."
