Hotel Marconi Express in Bologna

What I liked: the hotel and rooms are very clean and conveneint to the train station. The front desk personnel was friendly.

Why three stars then? The hotel is not a separate building but rather a part of an apartment complex, a suite of rooms located just on the 1st floor. As such, certain rooms, including ours, face an inner courtyard type area - not actually a courtyard or atrium, just on open space where I expect the floor is the roof of the underground parking.

On one of our nights there, the apartment above our room in the apartments had an EXTREMELY LOUD party with their balcony door open, such that the noise echoed into the open area. The party - people yelling, music blaring, bottles breaking - went on until 3:00 am. No chance of sleep for us. I was amazed, thinking surely someone in other apartments or the hotel would call the police or something, but no.

When I complained to the the young fellow at the front desk the next day, he apologized and said I should have called the hotel number because it would have paged him (people still have a pager) and he would have come to remedy the problem. He then went on to say that, you know, Bologna is a university town and it is a Friday night, so they were likely students just having a good time. In fact, he said he himself was out "in the bars" with friends until 2:00 am. I asked him how he would have heard my call then, if that was the case. He shut up and told me to have a good day.

My advice if you want to stay here is to request a room facing the street. While the street below is busy, at least traffic noise becomes "white noise" and you do not run the risk of having an amplified party keeping you up.