Club Med Cefalù - Sicily

Excellent staff, superb service and really good hotel. Staff very friendly and go out of their way to make your stay enjoyable. Sailing, paddle boarding, canoeing all on site with decent well maintained kit. Scuba diving not available on site despite literature stating so. Swimming pool really good and nice temperature. Rooms fantastic with comfortable furnishings and very clean.

September 2020, I visited Club Med Cefalù with a friend. We are in Covid-19 crisis. Sicilian government imposed rules, but even so we had the best time ! The resort is just amazing. I've visited many clubs all around Mediterranean and other countries, I can tell this is one of my favorites. It has been renovated not a long time ago and what they did is just great. The Boccia / pétanque place is one of the best with an incredible view on the village of Cefalù. The rooms are big and luxurious. The resort is not too big, if you have a Villetta far form the entrance there is a club car taxi service to pick you up. The food was just AMAZING! Covid rules, the buffet was smaller, but the quality was top notch ! It was maybe a case of less, but better. And if you are a foodie, with a taste for Italian food, don't look for another resort! The crisis was good in that way, not in others like show and animation. We still had live performance and my favorite was the Italian band with all the Italian classic song. The night life and party Club Med spirit was a bit muted unfortunately. We had parties, at the zen pool, at the sea in the middle of the rocks with a great setup. But again, pandemic rules. The difference between a 4 and a 5 star / trident resort is about the services. In that way, I felt that is was more on the 4 stars side... like the staff was reduced. But staff were great anyway! And a big thanks to the reception and bar teams! All in all we had terrific vacation in Cefalù and we want and will most certainly comme back to try the full Club Med experience / spirit / party, but without covid.

Great staff, superb location, the buffet restaurant is so good, definitely the best all inclusive restaurant I've been to, loads of delicious seafood and traditional ingredient dishes. The 14 year old in the group was a bit bored it's not really suited for kids like some other places we've been. If I had to find something to complain about, don't bother with booking a table in the exclusive restaurant in the old building. They tried to hard and failed. Out of the 3 courses I had only the starter was OK. They charged money for the wine, poured out all the white wine at the start, followed by the red. I had seafood. I could go on. Other guests I spoke to agreed with me. The other thing was the litter near the hotel, of course not the responsibility of the hotel and if they read this, get on the the local authorities about it. They're letting you down when you've all done such a great job.

A mix of lights and shadows: the location in unbeatable with sweeping views of the coast, private beach, pretty Mediterranean landscaping. Nice pools. Lots of activities available. Everything else is just meh: the worst of all, the quality of food in the buffet area, at times the food was just inedible. There was nothing authentic, mostly bulk frozen/supermarket stuff, so make sure you go out for dinner in town if you wanna have an idea of local food. The rooms are decorated in an impersonal ikea-like style, dangerously bordering tackiness. Plenty of tacky details in the communal areas too (all those coloured-LEDs, cmon). Service not always friendly (I witnessed a buggy-car driver snapping at customers). Overall there’s a slight sense of tiredness in both rooms and communal areas, which is surprising considering this place opened only 3 years ago (my room’s walls were badly stained). Will I go back? I don’t think so. Also considering that for the price paid I got one of the worse houses available, on a major buggy-car crossing, near the disco area. When I complained I was told: don’t worry there are only old people these days, pretty quiet, at midnight we stop the music…

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 get so its a 3.

Club Med Cefalu was our first and last Club Med experience. 1. 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. 2. 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 for Club Med.

View is breathtaking. Food and drink iss 3 out of 5. Service is basic. Entertainment today is out of date.

Food, views, staff, activities and facilities were just great!! Awesome club!!! Highly recommended!