Saracen Sands Hotel & Congress Centre Palermo

The hotel has outstanding staff!! Both Georgia and another woman who checked me in the day prior were so lovely and attentive. They went out of their way to ensure I was comfortable and had an incredible stay for my layover in Palermo. The hotel also has everything you will need!!

Pros: rooms were clean, staff were mostly helpful, pools were clean, train station is a 20 minute walk away but you have to walk along the road sometimes, beach is lovely Cons: we lost power on the first night and were told it was a normal occurrence and it would be back by midnight, the pools shut at odd times during the day while people are in them with no warning, if you have any food intolerances or allergies I wouldn't recommend. They won't put labels out onto the food because "no one reads them" but they are also not willing to tell you what's in the food, and reuse utensils for foods with and without allergens even after you explain why you need to know what's in the food

We stayed in this hotel as a family of 3. The room was clean but we had no hot water for some reason, I took shower in the cold water 🥶 but reported to the reception and they have repaired it. They had a „mummy room” in where you could prepare milk or food for baby which was good but they never told us about it when we checked in.. I only found out about this room on the 3rd day of our stay. The breakfast was disappointing as there was no options apart from the sweet bakery/cakes. Dinner was absolutely amazing! The food was very delicious „Italian cuisine” which was extremely tasty however there was no dessert options as everyday they have served only one dessert which was disappointing as you had no choices. Sometimes the waiters were giving creamy cakes to the tables but they have skipped out our table for some reason (it happened twice). The hotel has a underground path to the beach, we went though it but the gate was closed and it was only 6pm… it was a shame as we had to walk all the way around to go back to the beach with our pram… even tho there was a guy who had the key and didn’t want to open the gate for us, which really shouldn’t be a problem. The next day we were on the beach with our pram, when we were leaving holding the pram and the baby towards the gate, we noticed it’s closed again, the guy who had the key was sitting, eating and looking at us carrying all that stuff and haven’t said a world that the gate is closed. We asked him nicely if he could open it but he totally ignored us like some trash… we were extremely shocked! That was very very disappointing experience unfortunately…