Marina Holiday Resort & Spa

We were looking for a quiet place near the Palermo airport where we could have a good night rest before flying early the next day with our baby girl. At our arrival we learned there was a big wedding taking place at the hotel. We were concerned but the woman at the front desk guaranteed it would be over early and kindly gave us an upgrade. On our way to the room we had to jump over laundry bags filled with napkins from the wedding and boxes of mineral water bottles. The room was spacious and had a nice sea view, but when we had a look down our window we saw a bunch of tables set up for the wedding after party with a DJ set up and all. So we asked to be moved to another room and after some time we were given one at the spa across the street. It was nice and seemed quiet. But that changed after the train passed by. We realised the train tracks were just meters away. It was late and we had to put our 17 mth old baby to sleep and we thought the train would pass just once or twice through the night. So we went to bed, but at around 9:30-10:00 some REALLY LOUD live music started to play. It was as if it was being played inside the room! We never found out if it came from the wedding or the bars down the street, but we couldn't do anything about it. Fortunately it was over after about two hours. The cherry on the cake was the door lock buzzer on the main entrance of the building buzzing all night long with people coming in to the hotel. Overall a terrible experience!!!

The hotel's registrations on websites like expedia/hotels.com is not accurate. We upgraded our room on hotels.com to superior sea view and the hotel tried to put us in a rear facing family room saying sea view was 40 euros a night extra - that was resolved quite quickly on us showing the staff their own website's interpretation of a superior room..... They have a bar but it seldom seemed staffed and I had to pester the reception desk twice to get a drink from the bar as while the reception was empty the person attending it needed to get another colleague to serve us at the bar. The shower doors on the bar allowed loads of water to leak onto the floor which didn't bother us but would be a trip hazard for kids/people not too steady on their feet. We needed several towels to act as a 'barrier' for the water getting across the room..... The breakfast is lovely and hotel interior amazing, views incredible. But there are a lot of things that hold this hotel back. It's a 10 minute walk to the beach - which has no umbrellas. We drove round to Castellamare del Golfo (worth the drive as it's amazing). The hotel takes bookings for events (several on on the Sunday we were there) and there is no where for hotel guests to go. We couldn't use the pool in the early evening as there was dessert being served by the pool for a holy communion event and the place was overrun by very well dressed locals and many many children. We felt totally uncomfortable so just cleared off.