Hotel Villa Esperia - Taormina, Italy 

The young owners have improved their smallish hotel considerably over the years. The architecture is far from spectacular but the location is good: just across a moderately busy road (but it stands back a bit) from the beach of Mazzaro and within 5 minutes walk of the cable car to Taormina itself. I found the staff pleasant and the rooms, food and service perfectly adequate. There is a nice pool terrace, where a really nice buffet/BBQ is a feature on Saturday evenings.

I booked 1 room for 2 nights here... the photos a very deceiving on the intenet. Trust me the hotel is not that clean there. We were at the end of a great trip of Sicily and wanted to spend some time in Taormina before going home. When we went to our room the bedspread was filthy with stains I would not even use it as a rag. Then we noticed that the AC did not work or the TV too. When I went down to the front desk there were also some other guests with the same complaints....hmmmm. I was told they would send someone up to fix everything. So went out for dinner 3+ hours to return to a very hot and humid room with no AC or TV. I called down to the desk and was told that the maintenance person had left for the evening and they did not have anyone to help us out since it was the night shift. We were very dissapointed in the lack of service and how the staff could quickly decide they spoke no English. Fortunata io que parlo italiano e mi sono imbarazzata per i miei concittadini italiani. ( I was embarrased of my fellow Italian countrymen) We were offered a 10% discount for the room and the inconveniences...give me a break. I would recomend this place for a cleaning crew and for customer service training. There are too many wonderful hotels in Taormina, please pass on this place unless you want to be ripped off.