Insulae Resort — Restaurant in Cefalù

Beautifully built resort, pool facilities are great and staff is very helpful and friendly. The cocktails are amazing. Comfortable beds. However, it is way overpriced. Price-quality is definitely substandard. For the money you pay, you should expect more. We found the resort very immature. Few examples: room cleaning and room facilities need improvement; the plug of the hairdryer did not fit in the socket.. every time when flushing the toilet, water came out and splashed on the floor.. there was only 1 hook for 1 towel to hang, the cleaning lady did not clean the bathroom properly and did not clean the trash cans.. there were ants in the room and they are aware of that, so the least the cleaninglady has to do, is removing the garbage everyday to avoid a stream of ants (which we had), washingsoap was not replenished, too little hooks in closet (only 6 for 2 people?), closet did not properly open the trains running behind the resort, until 23.00 at night breakfast until 09.30. You could stay longer but they are cleaning up around you making it uncomfortable to sit longer. People are on vacation and want to sleep in, never seen breakfast time end that early breakfast choice very limited. Only white baguette and white toast. People also like brown breads etc. I think they're trying their best but for this money its simply not sufficient. Besides, you have to order egg dishes where you have to wait for. Its much easier to just let people take their own scrambled eggs and sunny sides up from the buffet. I think they want to be exclusive but they make the wrong choices.

Lot of small things but its not comparable to any other hotel/resort for this amount of money. Either lower the price so that its fair what you pay for and people lower their expectations, or improve the quality of the breakfast, the rooms and...

I had a disappointing stay at Insuale Resort. The breakfast options were extremely limited and lacked variety. There was hardly any sausage available, and they didn't even offer omelettes or fried eggs. The food was also almost the same every day.

While some of the staff members were friendly, it was frustrating that one of the employees could barely speak English. She forgot what we ordered really often and didn’t even understood the easiest orders. This made communication difficult and led to misunderstandings.

I had requested the hotel to make a reservation for a restaurant, but they failed to do so. As a result, we had to drive into town only to find out that the restaurant was closed. The hotel did not bother to inform us about this.

The rooms were disappointing, with poorly designed closets. One of the closet doors couldn't even open properly due to lack of space. The Bed was uncomfortable and the terrace was constructed in such a way that guests from the room next door constantly walked past our balcony, leaving us with little to no privacy.

The hotel claimed to be near the sea, but the beach was nearly impossible to find. After 14 days, we only managed to locate a camping beach that was a 15-minute walk away.

To my surprise, the hotel charged a whopping 5€ for a pool towel change, even though we were staying for two weeks. This seemed like an unnecessary and excessive charge.

The worst thing is that my partner's watch was stolen at the end of our stay. We tried to talk to the manager but they didn’t even let us talk to him and only gave us the support email. This incident raises serious concerns about the security and trustworthiness of the cleaning staff. It was an extremely unsettling experience.

All in all, in my opinion, the hotel is not...

3.5 out of 5.

Highlights(downside will follow):

Amazing food and drinks. If you stay here definitely try their restaurant at least once, lunch and dinner, especially dinner. Best food we had in Sicily so far. Serving was also great.

Beautiful architectural resorts.

Some downsides to consider:

Misinformed/lied to by the receptionist several times. For example, they forgot we had booked the shuttle bus to come back from Cefalù, they kept us waiting for 50 minutes in heavy rain. We had called them 8 times, when we finally got through to them the receptionist told us they are on the way, that they’re stuck in traffic, that there’s delays due to weather etc. when the driver arrived they let us know there’s no traffic, no delays and that he just got grabbed and rushed to find us.

They say there is a beach 500m away, they’re not wrong, but it’s well hidden, and full of rocks not a relaxing beach. See photos.

There is a giant water/chemical plant site very close to the resort on the west side, which you can easily find on the satellite view. It’s very disturbing with heavy machinery operating through the night. Again, when asking what exactly it was at reception, they told us it’s just a private construction site, and that they’ve called the police to come but no one knows what it is and don’t worry about it. It was an odd lie to tell.

The trainline is just behind the resort, I don’t really mind but you might want to consider as it’s quite easy to hear them...