Club Med Cefalù - Sicily — Hotel in Cefalù

Stayed here for 6 nights in October after a week of travelling Italy. Will start with the Cons as they may help other potential patrons more than the Pros would.

Cons: Language barrier. The resort seems to cater to mostly French, Belgian and Italians (from what we could see). So most of the staff have excellent Italian and French, but only very basic English (there were a few exceptions). We are native English speakers (from Ireland and England) and unfortunately have only basic Italian & French, so we struggled to communicate with staff at times. It's not that we expect everyone to speak English - we are in a foreign country after all. But it does detract from the overall experience if you are struggling to communicate with staff. Example 1: On three separate occasions we had to call reception. On each occasion the first person we spoke to couldn't understand us and passed us on to a colleague who also couldn't understand us. We were then finally passed on to someone who could understand what we were asking for. Having to explain / repeat yourself three times each time is a bit frustrating (especially on one occasion, that even after the third time of explaining, they still got it wrong :) ). Example 2: A place like Club Med prides itself on the experience their guests have. They have GOs (what they call their staff) mingling and chatting to guests all the time - often drinking with them and seeming to have a great time. Due to our language limitations, we were exempt for most of that. So if you're like us (limited French and Italian) and looking for the full club med experience, maybe this is not the resort for you. Il Palazzo. The gourmet restaurant in the resort - avoid it. We went there for dinner one night and the food was terrible. The swordfish starter was bland, the complementary gnocchi tasted like washing up liquid, and the squid main was not cooked very well and was swimming in a soup that had little flavour. The staff here are great (Roberto, a delight) but the food was a massive disappointment. Stick to the buffet restaurant which is unreal (see Pros). Little annoyances. 1) As mentioned above we had communication issues due to our language limitations. Most of the staff attempted to communicate in a very kindly way even though it must have been difficult for them. Some staff however were very dismissive once they realised we were English speakers. 2) The air con in our room did not appear to be working. We called reception and they initially told us (quite rudely) it was intended that it was off (even though at arrival they showed us how to use it). I pushed them on this point saying it was 26 degrees in our room and we would like it turned on. They said they would see what they could do and hung up. A few minutes later we could hear it turn on (result) but never received a follow up call from reception about it. 3) We came back from swimming and but might as well have stayed in the sea. It was evident that housekeeping had been there but instead of mopping the floor they seemed to have covered it in water. Transfer. Not so much a Con as a tip. Club med charge an extortionate amount for a transfer. We booked a transfer with a local Cefalu taxi company for €100.

Pros: Food @ La Rocca & La Riva. The buffet restaurant you can use for breakfast, lunch and dinner is unreal. The food there is amazing, some of the best seafood I've had. Barring one disastrous trip to Il Palazzo, we went to La Rocca for breakfast and dinner every night. So many good choices for food (not all, but most). La Riva is the best spot for lunch. Excellent location and the food there is great. Hiking. Vittorio was an amazing guide. He was friendly and informative. We went for an all day hike with him and it was awesome. Location. We went swimming every day in the sea. Beautiful and easy place to swim.

All in all, I would probably give this a place a 3.5 or 4 if it wasn't for the price. Expensive for what you...

Club Med Cefalu was our first and last Club Med experience.

We informed them over a month in advance about a dietary restriction and it was impossible to get a direct answer electronically even after many messages with them. When we arrived, about half of the staff were not well trained, which led to one of us getting poisoned the first night of our honeymoon. Some of the staff were great, but it was impossible to know who was well informed and who wasn’t until it was too late. Throughout our stay, we got inconsistent answers and saw (some) staff not observing proper food safety practices. This is terrible anywhere, but in Italy the awareness and training for food allergies is much higher than anywhere in the world… except at this resort.

We booked this for our honeymoon and informed their agent, added it to our booking, and contacted the resort via email multiple times well in advance to ask for the advertised honeymoon package on their website. No one ever followed through on this, and after our arrival at every opportunity they tried to give every excuse possible to blame us — claiming we hadn’t listed it on the booking (we had), claiming we didn’t bring our marriage certificate (we did), claiming the package didn’t even exist (we showed it to them on their own site), etc etc. The staff were either extremely rude or would promise to follow up and never do so. Juliette was the rudest of all, literally sitting us down and scolding us, wagging her finger in our face and never admitting they had messed up. Never once received an apology from any staff or any small attempt to make up for it.

3. Many of the local Italian staff are great, but the senior management here is rotten to the core. Extremely lazy. Never delivering on promises. Cancelling scheduled activities or claiming they never existed in the first place. This is bad for any hotel and completely unacceptable for something claiming to be a top tier resort (with prices that match).

4. The room was very cold on several rainy days, dropping to 15 degrees at one point. Our heat wasn’t working, so we called reception and they first said they would fix it (they didn’t), then claimed it was impossible to fix it because it was locked by a central computer in Paris. Of course, this was just a lie to avoid doing work — we later found a very nice Italian repairman who could turn it on for us, but by then it was our last day and we were packing up to leave. As a result, we had a cold villa that was comfortable for most of our stay. Since most of the “scheduled” activities didn’t actually exist, we basically had nothing to do but freeze in a cold room.

5. Many of the senior staff have no responsibility and act like it is their vacation (drinking at the bars, playing the sports games with each other, chatting on the beach) and you’re imposing on them by asking them to do their job.

The only guests we found who were happy with the resort were “veteran” Club Med people who only go to Club Med and have been going their entire lives. They were lovely people. But they didn’t seem to have high (or even medium) expectations from Club Med — many seemed unsurprised that events were cancelled or didn’t exist, etc. We’ve stayed at many far less fancy resorts that provided actual customer service and reliable activities.

We must note that there were nice, helpful people we did meet, including a wonderful, grandmotherly Italian woman in the buffet who went above and beyond to help us eat safely. The hiking guides are also wonderful, but as it turned out they are just contractors— they don’t actually work...

Absolutely stunning resort. Very pristine, beautiful views and exceptional INITIAL host service. The problems began when we physically arrived to our rooms. We upgraded to an ocean view suite. We ended up getting a room which looked at the back of another bungalow. We could TECHNICALLY see the ocean through the trees and the buildings but that's all I can say. Ocean / Seafront view means something different to us I guess.

We booked this location for several reasons, one of those reasons is becuase they have three restaurants on site from which to choose for meals. We arrived today, a Wednesday, and we need to leave on Saturday. Well, the restaurant by the ocean is closed due to high winds which push a serious sea breeze on shore and cause dining guests to get wet with sea spray so they have it shut down for the next few days. Sounds like staffing issues to me but what do I know, let's just take their word for it. So now we are forced between two places to eat. The one place takes reservations and all are booked until the day we leave, the other is the Buffett. Well, our options are buffet buffet or buffet. It's just frustrating that we are left with only one option for a place to eat dinner.

These seem like issues which only entitled Americans would bring up in complaints. However, that's only where it begins. We are here for our honeymoon and truly enjoyed the live DJ and bar service. However, bar service ended abruptly at midnight while the DJ continued until 1 am. There's no place on the resort to grab a glass of wine, beer, or cocktail after midnight. We had a bottle of Champagne in the room and we were okay with just heading back to enjoy that but it was warm and we needed ice. No one at the reception desk would make an effort (not even TRY) to get us some ice as they stated that there was no ice available (on the entire resort). I travel for a living, quite literally. I've stayed at many 5 star resorts. Holiday INN in New Orleans, the murder captial of the United States, has ice machines running 24/7.

Long story short, I went to the bar myself, which was closed, and they made a bucket of ice happen even though everyone was cleaning up and service was done for the evening.

The staff is very polite and very kind. It's more of a policy thing I take issue with and not the staff, however, I will say that these beautiful young men and women seem to work long hours and once they are done, they are DONE! Don't expect to get milk out of a bull unless you understand what you're asking for because youll be disappointed.

The resort is 99% French. The staff all speak French and will greet you in French and not Italian. No issues with that as even though we are Americans, we understand and speak French, Spanish, and fluent Italian. However, it's very awkward being in Italy and being at a resort and everyone speaks french. No issue with the French guests, everyone is very nice. Just awkward.

I plan on fixing this review and editing my rating once I speak to the general manager. Hopefully they have a fix.

Fixed to 4 stars. They addressed the ice issue. Working on giving five stars before we...