President Park Hotel

“Relaxing hotel with friendly staff”

married couple traveling to Sicily with goal of experiencing nature and culture. We chose this hotel for good amenities, good location to use as base for exploration, and being close but not in the midst of the busy tourist streets. For this the property was a perfect choice. Location: the hotel … more

married couple traveling to Sicily with goal of experiencing nature and culture. We chose this hotel for good amenities, good location to use as base for exploration, and being close but not in the midst of the busy tourist streets. For this the property was a perfect choice. Location: the hotel sits reclusive and quiet on top of a hill, with beautiful views and no pass-through traffic. Inside the garden is a small pool which we enjoyed on some occasions to recoup from long outings in the different coastal villages and also trip to Mt Etna. Some others have critiqued the hotel for placement but this is a great feature of choice for us. It is not a hotel suited for family with small kids and expect to walk to the beach every day, it is not placed for this and the whole area has only rocky beaches - Catania does have a sandy beach 40 min by car. Be aware that almost every street in the general area has either non-existent or extremely narrow sidewalks, and the driving culture is not one to yield for pedestrians, which makes it dangerous to hike alongside the road. For this reason you are dependent on motoring for getting around and to/from the hotel. Once inside the villages you can walk somewhat more freely but it is still something to be cautious about safety. The hotel offers a shuttle service to get to nearby villages so you will need that, taxi/uber or a rental car or bike. The only exception to this is a nearby small grocery shop for basic fruits, water etc and a restaurant Odyssey that we strongly recommend for nearby lunch and dinners if you don’t always want to venture down to the villages to have a meal. (Great service there as well by Eduardo!) The hotel also offers dinner but we never tried it. Rooms: the room was a standard double and they upgraded us to have a pool view which was nice. The room was spacious, with plenty of wardrobe space to unpack, a nice balcony, and nice bathroom. The mattress was amply soft (for Italian standard which can often be extremely firm). The room was always clean and kept tidy and stocked with supplies every day by the staff. The AC was good, not noisy at all and allowed to set to our own preferences. Breakfast: good quality and a decent selection, with eggs, sausage, cheeses, fried vegetables, small dishes, yogurt etc. So for being an Italian hotel it was very good as most Italian hotels offers just basic cornetto and coffee so we were satisfied. However, you should not expect lots of different salads and breads like in Northern European hotels. Service: Staff was all very friendly and helpful, greeting us with a smile and being polite. Not all speak strong English but a bridge with our basic Italian and a smile goes a long way, and there was always someone on hand to assist with English if needed for some conversations. We never had a problem with language barriers. Once even the director himself drove us to the village when we hadn’t pre-ordered a shuttle! I want to also particularly mention Fabiana as another example of the great service: when we wanted to see Mt Etna and had trouble booking a tour, she arranged a tour guide with our pickup at the hotel the next morning in a matter of hours, with final arrangements secured late in the evening. All with no issues at all and everything went smoothly. Points for improvement: We did not have any issues with the general service at the hotel, but for a perfect 10 it would be nice if the roof-top terraces and pool bar was open some days and evenings, they were closed during our stay. We used the lobby bar inside and ventured out on the lower roof deck (which was available) with the drinks for a seat there to enjoy the view. Service in the lobby bar was sometimes lacking as it is not regularly tended to, meaning we would more often than not have to ask reception staff to call for a bartender causing extra waiting. Finally, as we had a room adjacent to the restaurant, we could sometimes hear noise of chairs and commotion from that reach our room early in the morning. These are just very small inconveniences but the only thing we could note for improving. All in all we were very happy to stay here and will gladly recommend President Park Hotel to anyone with similar goals, and will be more than happy to return in the future. Thank you for taking good care of us!

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