VOI Marsa Siclà Essentia

Mixed reviews about this hotel. Your experience will depend on what your standards and expectations are of a 4* hotel. First the good. Beautiful grounds and well maintained, staff on the whole are friendly. The beach is great and there are always sun beds available on the beach or by the pool at all times of day so you never need to reserve. There’s also plenty of parking for hire cars. The rooms are big and have lovely outside spaces. Now the not so good. If you don’t speak Italian then you will struggle with a lot of things. Day-to-day communication isn’t so good, plus all evening entertainment is in Italian with no translation to English. The restaurants are all in the same place so every morning you have to walk 10 minutes uphill to breakfast in the baking sun to arrive at the restaurant with no AC. The buggies to transport you around site are nowhere to be seen and if they are then they’re very selective who they pick up (the beach shuttle works well though). The food is generally poor, not much choice and anything that is supposed to be hot is cold. Meal times are very regimented, I found it odd having to sit at the same table every day for every meal. Don’t bother eating the food from the beach bar. There’s no option for room service/food outside of the set hours. This was really difficult for me and my partner as we were both very unwell whilst staying at the hotel and sometimes all we wanted was a croissant in our room for breakfast or a takeaway pizza but that wasn’t an option. The cost of food if you are half board is unjustifiable (lunch at the buffet for 2 people is €60!). The hotel claims to be eco, but some things just don’t work for guest experience for example the powder toiletries in the room and no options to refill plastic bottles with water. On check out day we felt rushed to be out of the room. We agreed with reception 24 hours before to check out at 12pm, however we had cleaning staff knocking on the door at 9:40am and waiting outside the room so we felt pressured to get out. It’s a shame as our experience with the reception staff when we arrived was great, very accommodating and helpful which made us feel very welcome. But all of what I have outlined above outweighed any good and for us we won’t be revisiting.

Beautiful hotel friendly helpful staff brilliant rooms resort so quiet and all facilities 5 star can’t fault our stay food was much nicer than most large hotels we were dinner bed breakfast we were upgrade to a suit which was huge with balcony and Juliet balcony golf carts always available to get you around the resort can’t praise our stay highly enough and real coffee any way in restaurants not self service machine I would recommend this hotel we’ve loved and enjoyed our stay Thank you

It was first time staying it Sicily and this hotel was ideal! Very clean, friendly staff and just an overall beautiful site. Would absolutely stay here again. The only downside is the how far away the villas are from the restaurant so it’s a bit of walk from the main facilities. There are shuttle cars which is fantastic but we found they weren’t as frequent.

Hotel & facilities: Very nice, park-like structure of the hotel area. You can see it is well maintained, in particular the outside areas. The rooms were very spacey (we had a deluxe family room) and clean, a bit “under-furnished” though - e.g the wardrobe could be optimized, more shelfs etc. also few more deko/pictures would improve the atmosphere and make it less “sterile”. Don’t expect a luxury hotel, but a well maintained family hotel that is worth its money. What is really great is the beach that you easily reach by the provided free shuttle services. The beach bar offers cold drinks and some snacks. If you book a deluxe room you get a free umbrella and daybeds in the first row at the beach. Very kind staff everywhere. What you definitely need if you want to explore the area is a car - otherwise you are trapped in the hotel. Restaurants: We booked only bed and breakfast which turned out to be a good decision. The breakfast is ok but nothing special. The dinner buffet is totally overpriced and the choice of dishes is limited. But if you look in the are around the hire you find very nice restaurants that offer outstanding Mediterranean food at a very reasonable price. But, as stated above, you need a car for this. Overall a nice experience outside of the main season in autumn holidays.

A good stay but not a great one, especially for the money we paid and the stars of the hotel! Room was very small for a couple with two kids and with the small bed we really could not move around. The place is described as family oriented but beach opens at 9 and closes at 19. More time should be allowed to family with very small kids to enjoy early morning sun. The beach was also crowded with umbrellas and chairs to leave very small space to people. The 3 life savers were more busy with that and renting stuff or chatting than looking at the sea and people. Restaurant food quality was excellent with very kind and polite service and staff but again tables and chairs too close to each other to leave only little space to move around. There were not many trash cans around the facility and especially around the pool so people often left the chairs and tables dirty. The staff at the reception was however very kind and polite.

Thanks for the good memories you made for us in our honeymoon, everything was good except the shower in the camera was not clean enough( muffi e insetti…) The products in the shower were not pleasant because of the material was a powder which was not like a shampoo… there were not any hair conditioner and cream for the skin after shower. The food was perfect and the staff was professional. Thanks again.