Hotel Caesar Palace — Hotel in Giardini-Naxos

As a frequent traveller and user of Trip Advisor, I always try and write a review that I would find useful, so here goes.||The good points:|Shuttle bus that takes you to (and back from) Giardini Naxos throughout the day/evening. You get free loungers/umbrella on Lido di Naxos which is a beautiful beach. Note: at the weekend it is packed with locals, so you get bumped to the 'cheap seats'. Use the weekend for other excursions!|Buffet style breakfast, lunch & dinner is OK albeit a little monotonous. They also provide cakes, snacks, ice cream throughout the day in the hotel too. |10 euros pp deposit for the use of hotel towels, although they are a little old (and brown). One of mine was full of holes, however served it's purpose. |There is a gym, it's basic, but functional. If it's not open you can request the key from reception which was great as we're early birds. |There is entertainment most evenings, some better than others, but if you can get a table it's lovely to sit outside with a drink listening to some live music. ||The disappointing areas:|The hotel was probably lovely in it's day, but it's now really tired and in desperate need of refurbishment. You cannot clean something that is fundamentally crumbling in places. |The room. The beds were very uncomfortable, to the point that my husband and I have returned home with neck and back pain. Our bath/shower leaked, so we often had water everywhere. Who has rubber bath mats in 2025 - they are renowned for being full of bacteria and other peoples hair/skin....urgh. The waste plumbing caused some nasty smells most days too. |Although our room was made up every day with fresh bedding, towels and cleaned, my overall view is that the hotel as a whole is not that clean. There was food waste on the stairs for 3 days without being cleaned, the coffee machines were covered in stains, the food cabinets were quite greasy in places...I can go on. |Coffee. Sicily is renowned for great coffee, however the coffee at breakfast from the machines was undrinkable. The only option was an expresso - if the machine was working. |The hotel has a policy of serving drinks at certain times of the day/evening in paper cups and they also only provide plastic tea spoons!? They advertise their recycling policy - yet force you to use items which cannot be reused. That blew my mind and frankly it's nasty having to eat anything with a plastic spoon!|Staff - due to the fact that everything was self-service, the staff didn't have much of a chance to interact with the guests. My view, sadly, is that they were not hugely happy in their work. That said, we found the reception staff very friendly and helpful when we needed them. I've travelled all over the world and typically it's the staff that make the hotel/holiday a truly magical experience, guests should be made to feel special - this was definitely not the case here. ||General:|Taxis are very expensive. We tried to use the bus, but the hotel had the wrong timetable displayed, so we missed the last bus. However they are great value for money and take you to Taormina, Castlemole, etc.|Giardini Naxos has some great bars and restaurants for all budgets. We met some wonderful people who served great food and were very welcoming. |We booked an all day boat trip which was wonderful - a great way to see the coast, swim in the turquoise...

Just arrived home after a week all inclusive at this hotel. A bit of a mixed review but mostly a negative one unfortunately.|The hotel looks pretty from the outside, with ivy and colourful arches surrounding the rooms. Inside the place is old and dated and when you sit to eat dinner for example you get the feel of being in a cheap restaurant.|The rooms were ok (ish). Bed was comfortable, plenty of dated storage for clothes. The bathroom was also dated and there was dirty limescale around the taps and tiles. The shower was over the bath and leaked really badly all over the floor when you tried to use it. We tried having a bath instead only to find the plug hole also leaked and let the water out of the bath so we had to just make do. There is an awful smell of sewage coming up from the sink and toilet in the room. The balcony joining our room was really lovely and we enjoyed sitting out in the morning before breakfast and in the evening before bed. One of the nicest balconies we have had in any of the hotels we have stayed. The only real gripe we had about the balcony was the lack of privacy. The balconies are all joined together with nothing stopping other people from just stepping over onto your balcony. Maybe some trellis to separate the balconies.|Food. The worst hotel we have experienced out of many hotels and many countries with regards to food. Repetitive, undercooked meat and potatoes, hardly any choice with the same dishes every single day for a whole week with the odd variation of meat so either beef or pork but never a good choice. No live cooking stations or anything fun or exciting. No fries or simple food such as plain rice, hardly any choice of fruit or anything. A lot of the guests we spoke to were going out to eat because they didn’t enjoy the food. It really wasn’t a nice experience going for meals at this hotel. If I could offer any advice to this hotel it would be sort the food, it’s vile and cold and very boring. |The pool was large and quite deep. It would have been nicer if the music wasn’t blaring so loudly all day long and if the pool didn’t close at 6pm whilst the sun was still really hot! After 6pm there wasn’t anything for guests to do other than rifle through the slop in the dining room hoping to find something half decent to eat. |We could hear the entertainment. It was on alternate between karaoke and shows and sounded the same every other night. There was also a piano player and a couple of singers near the main pool early evening.|The shuttle bus to the beach and town was a nice touch. We used a couple of times but enjoyed a walk.|The entertainment staff were lovely. Kids seemed to really like them which was nice to see. |There were 2 bottles of water in the mini fridge in the room. Luckily we read the welcome leaflet and realised that if we had drank the water we would have been charged 2 euros per bottle! A bit cheeky and out of order seeing as tho the supermarket around the corner was selling bottles of water for 37p a bottle. First time we’ve been all inclusive and been expected to pay for water in the fridge!|The snack bar throughout the day was basic and not appetising at all. Although there was ice cream which was popular.|The coffee was also horrid. |Would definitely not stay at this...

A lot of mixed English reviews for this hotel and I feel we fall somewhere in the middle. ||I think if you are used to and expecting a Spanish style hotel and all inclusive this is not for you. The hotel is clean enough but dated. The outside space is lovely and we only struggled to get a sunbed one afternoon. We didn’t need to get up early to secure a spot! |The food offering is ample and drink selection is fine. No cocktails but enough there to find something to drink. The orange granita /slush is lovely! ||The pool area does get quite busy at the limited shallow end - recommend a floatation toy of some description if you have children who are not strong swimmers. These were allowed. There is a smaller kids pool that was quiet but our son is a good swimmer so we didn’t use this. The music is very loud around the pool, but it didn’t bother us too much.||Food was variable, I think the main concern would be the lack of kid friendly options at meal times. Plain pasta with sauce was my son’s stable diet for a week! Having said that he was never hungry and myself and my husband enjoyed the food choices. The hot food was often luke warm but there is a microwave. Be aware the advertised times for food are not when food is available - they tend to start packing up and not replenishing items anywhere up to 30 minutes before the end time. Annoying but if you know you can factor this into your plans. ||We had a balcony room, was nice and we enjoyed the late day sun on there once the pool is in shade. It was cleaned with fresh towels daily. Late checkout was 50€ extra until 2pm (instead of 10.30). Safe was 50€ deposit with pool towels included in this too. We were lucky with neighbours the first part of the holiday and it was quiet, the last few days it was noisier and I was woken up with other room noises. Children also liked to kick our door as they ran past at night on a couple of occasions. No CCTV so hotel could do very little about this. The corridors were quite dark and unloved. ||The evening entertainment is fine, we like to play games and chill so it suited us and my son liked the mini disco. The animation team were very friendly with him. The entertainment is loud and can go on past 11pm - we often were waiting for it to finish to be able to go to sleep. ||Car parking is plentiful on site. We did use the beach shuttle once to go to the beach. You get an umbrella and sunbeds for free with hotel ticket but we didn’t enjoy this. It was very crowded and row after row of sun beds with fences between different sections spoilt the experience. Sea was not the cleanest but shallow enough. ||Keep an eye on Etna at night, we’re were lucky enough to see lava erupting from our balcony view! ||Overall we had a lovely holiday here and didn’t find too many negatives just things that maybe were not to our tastes / suitable for us. I can understand some of the negatives in the reviews but I think it’s just down to your expectation of an Italian all inclusive...