Cefalu, Hotel Riva del Sole

We wasted a long evening trying to explain to the hotel staff that the air conditioning did not work. Our room felt about 30 Celsius and even standing on the corridor was at least 5 degrees cooler. Their air conditioning is a grill fitted to the wall (not the XX century definition of functioning air conditioning) which was unable to even blow a piece of paper away (we tested it). The staff did not speak any English (lucky we managed in French) and did not offer any alternative (we requested a plug in mosquito repellant so we can sleep with the doors open). Instead they were shouty, dismissive, they said rude words to us in Italian knowing we wouldn't understand (but we googled them and were disgusted). We left the hotel before the end of the evening without staying overnight and yet they charged us their overpriced rate of EUR 155. We believe they are in breach of their contract with us as they missold their service as having air conditioning and English-speaking staff so the payment they took was unauthorised. Luckily our bank understands and will fully refund the payment to us. The hotel also advertised our room as having a balcony, bathrobes, slippers but it did not have any of these although the risk of slowly baking in the room overnight like two chicken really topped the misrepresentation of their advertisment.

Please don't risk going through the same hassle by staying here. Chances are, should you need any assistance, your requests will ignored, dismissed and you'll lose precious holiday time trying to resolve the issues!