Me and my wife stayed at Blu Hotel for three days on Half Board basis as a part of our 12 days trip around Sicily. Unfortunately this was the worst hotel experience of all during this holiday. We had stayed at 6 different hotels ranging from 3 star bed and breakfast to five star, and be warned this hotel is not even 3 star. There is nothing 5 star at all.

First of all the hotel itself is huge and not luxurious at all. The staff is not helpful at all and doesn’t speak English at all and most of them can’t even understand you. As soon as there is a problem they say they don’t understand and that is it. No help or solution the problem. The second night they switched off air conditioning off in all the rooms. When we phoned to the reception, explaining there is no fresh air in the room, we had been told that because it is not hot outside, the air conditioning is off they can’t switch it back on, and that we should open the windows instead. Not a five star service, telling customers when they should and when they shouldn’t feel hot or cold. By the way, if you open the window, there are mosquitos everywhere as the hotel is in the marina.

In the restaurant the staff are also very arrogant and don’t know what they are doing. We had trouble finding a set up table every morning and every evening. They don’t change table cloth and it was very hot all the time. The food was also terrible and not fresh. For the breakfast they had cold scramble eggs and cold bacon as a hot meal! I tried egg scramble once and it was disgusting – cold watery and no flavour. I didn’t touch the bacon, but the look of it was awful. They had only apples and kiwis as far as fruits, and no freshly squeezes juice either, just some cheap artificial juice drink. I had to pay extra for espresso even during breakfast. Dinner is no better either. Very limited buffet with one meat and one fish course. There were almost no fresh vegetables salads didn’t look fresh. Desert – if you like cream, fine, otherwise you are stuck. They had 4-5 cakes every day and they all were just pure cream, very-very sweet.

The room is good size, however the bathroom is so tiny. My wife and me are skinny, and we had difficulty using the loo , and kept hurting ourselves on the sink which was fitted almost above it. There is no wifi in the room and only one English channel on TV.

I could have mentioned more negatives, but I hope it is enough to convince you not to book this hotel. There are other great places to stay in Sicily, other than this overrated hotel.

This is a very nice hotel. It is modern, well designed and immaculately kept. Our room was excellent and the staff were efficient and friendly. The beach over the road was very nice and well run by the hotel. The water was crystal clear and you could see little fish. Our fellow guests were almost exclusively German.

The drawbacks are pretty well as described by other reviewers. The location is somewhat remote with very little to delay one in the local neighbourhood. Taormina and Etna are the closest attractions and both are about an hour and a half away by car. A hire car is pretty well essential. Our main disappointment, however, was the restaurant in the evening. Inevitably it was a buffet and I'm afraid pretty unattractive. We endured it rather than enjoyed it. There didn't appear to be any restaurants locally to provide an alternative.

That said we had a very good deal and left satisfied. The highlights being the hotel itself and the beach.

By the way, it's fairly hairy getting from the hotel to Palermo airport for the morning Ryanair flight. It's about two and a half hours and in Palermo the locals will demonstrate how to turn a three lane carriageway into a five lane carriageway. Still, all part of the fun.

The hotel was lovely with views of the sea and a harbour at the back of the hotel, which was very impressive when we arrived after a two and a half hour journey from palermo airport.
Our room was clean and had a nice balcony with a sea view. So far so good. The food was good and you had a variety of dishes and a buffet to choose from. Also the bar made very nice cocktails!
What let this place down was the fact it is in the middle of nowhere with a limited bus service and pricey taxis to the train station. Even then it isnt easy to get from one place to another. Really we needed to hire a car but the driving is quite scary and neither one of us fancied doing that. It would have been nice to wander around shops in the evening or just get a bus into the local town. There was one bar across from the hotel, and that was it!
We decided to go to Taormina for the day, which cost 25 euros just to get a taxi to the station, then we had to get a train to Messina then change for Taomina. The return taxi cost us 35 euros so all in all it was a very expensive but enjoyable day. We also went on a trip to Palermo which was very tiring but we were going stir crazy hanging around Furnari beach. Some of the hotel staff were very helpful, especially the bar staff and some of the waiters but the staff on reception were not so friendly and it seemed almost an inconvience when you asked for help with train times etc. I would go back to Sicily it is very beautiful, but no way would I go back to this hotel, far too quiet for me and my partner. It was mainly full of OAP's which says it all. There is music blaring at all hours from god knows where and the beach has constant music playing loudly, which is strange when it is full of pensioners doing aerobics, bizarre!
Another tip if you plan on swimming in their pool take swim hats with you or you wont be allowed in. I wondered why it was always empty. There are a list of rules before you can enter the pool.

I was positevely inpressed when we got there: amazing beach, great hotel location. It is quite hard to find a hotel right at the sea and of a good quality. This hotel meets these expectations. We had only breakfast included but the food was good though unvaried. We had once dinner at the hotel and it was wonderful! Sea food, four course meal. In general eating out is quite expensive there. Also there were not many restaurants around. Always a 30-min walk to get to the center of a village. the room was nice and big. But was niosy in the evening because was located right in front of a scene where every evening there were some plays or musical shows.
In total, vacation was wonderful!