Cala Dell'Arena

Have you ever seen a beautiful image of a place that mainly disappoints when you actually go there? Welcome to Cala dell’Arena! The parc itself is beautiful, just as the surrounding nature. But maintenance lacks. So many things spoiling the paradise-like feel you would expect at first sight. Nearly everything looks beautiful until you look closer. There are too many points in desperate need of love. This place was probably great 15-20 years ago. Now, the discrepancy between the price and quality is off limits. I will not go into details about outside, but the rooms, that definitely look very charming from the outside, just lack given the price point. Smelling damp and moldy, nearly useless kitchen (a true gem, time capsule from the 70’s!) that was already amortised decades ago, non-working airco in one room and fan making scary noises in the other bloody hot room. Hopefully they won’t catch fire during the night. Fungus in the fridge. Horrible mattress. Stains on walls. Bare bones furniture and wifi only at the reception. No couch or whatsoever. Either the rooms and the parc in general need an overtake, or the price needs to be dropped by at least 75% to make sense. With proper actions, the management could upgrade this place to an unbelievable high level, right now it just disappoints -apart from the fantastic first impression. Staff is friendly and helpful when checking in. We have been shown another room. Slightly better, but the improvement isn’t worth the hassle. Another nice one: they want the garbage to be collected separately. Glass, plastic, paper, organics. There are bins for all but organics. There a note in our room, saying you have to separate the trash, otherwise a fine will apply. When I asked about the organics bin, the lady told me to buy a garbage bag at the supermarket… Of course, we also reported our findings to *********** and according to them, they contacted the owner of the place. The lady at the reception said she didn’t know anything about that. So far for customer service of this place. Villa dell Vespa might be a good name as well, as we were terrorised by wasps. Do yourself a favour and spend your money elsewhere. This is the worst room in this price class we have ever had in Sicily. Rooms 2/5 Cleanliness 3/5 Location 5/5 Service Value for money 1/5 Would visit again 0/5

Cala Dell ‘Arena is a gorgeous place yet lacking in so many ways. There is no way to truly enjoy your experience there to the fullest when there are many things ruining it. This is going to be a long and detailed review on both bad and good, as I don’t think it’s a bad vacation spot, I think it’s very neglected and in need of a new attitude. The Bad- -The main issue was the room itself, mainly the bathroom situation. Part of the shower floor was covered in mould; it was a tile at the door of the shower that looked soft due to the amount of mould, clearly no effort had been made to clean or remove it. The metal taps and heads of the shower were covered in rust and in dire need of an update. I could not tell if we were given a neglected room because we were English and maybe the Italians staying there were prioritised but either way it was foul to try and feel clean after showering. We noticed from the day we arrived that the water coming from all the taps was salty and very questionably sourced, but I didn’t mind while salty. Then much worse occurred on the 2nd/3rd day when the water smell changed again, to an absolutely horrid bleachy, chlorinated smell. At this point I thought they were sourcing water from the pool, it was so disgusting to shower with, I felt filthy, Me and my boyfriend would wretch at the smell of turning on the tap to brush our teeth. Most disgusting part and the part I hated the most out of all of it. - You could say we should’ve directed these issues seriously to reception but we learnt from the moment we arrived that the receptionists weren't the most welcoming or helpful, we struggled to get information out of them at times, information that also seemed very basic. One of them was very apologetic when we were inconvenienced but it was the other who was completely apathetic and very unwilling to communicate effectively. This particular receptionist wasted our time on occasions unnecessarily, with no apology or even acknowledgement of the inconvenience. They also recommended a taxi service that is disgraceful, this man they recommend takes an hour to arrive and we agreed a specific pick-up time with him. He then proceeded to not show up and when called and messaged, he blatantly lied and said that we did not agree to that time, and had someone else come and pick us up. We also organised and paid for breakfast but every morning after when going for breakfast we were told by the breakfast staff that we were not on the list and we needed to speak to them again, but it was reception that wouldn’t communicate with their own staff. On our penultimate day, our air conditioning broke, we spoke to reception to send someone to fix it, as in Sicily its obviously unbearable to sleep without air conditioning in summer. Someone came an hour later but couldn’t fix it, said they would return, never did :, and of course we had to walk back down to reception hours later, asking for them to fix it again and waiting again for people to show