Baia Taormina Hotel

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This is a modern luxury hotel, very attractive to look at, with spectacular views over the bay, and is built in an Italian style. It has a very Italian feel about it, and basically, is catering for Italians and a few French and Germans. At the time of our visit, we were the only British there, and no British holiday companies were using it.
We felt, probably due to the language barrier, that the hotel staff could not be bothered with us e.g. if we booked a table for the evening meal in the restaurant, we were given the inferior tables, whereas the Italians were given the tables with the sea view; sometimes when we booked the courtesy bus, we were told it was full, yet we later found that Italians had been later fitted in.
The downside of the hotel was that English is not spoken much, and as a result, we felt that we were constantly being ripped off. Everything was charged as an extra e.g. pool towels, the "courtesy" bus to Taormina and the beach etc etc. Considering that the hotel is a good 20 min from Taormina, the drive being along what can only be described as a motorway, there didn’t seem to be any buses running, it was necessary to use the courtesy bus regularly.
The hotel is miles from any restaurants/bars, so unless you eat in at night (which was very expensive), there is no alternative but to travel into Taormina. A word of warning here, even if you do hire a car, we were told that parking in Taormina is impossible unless you park in the car park way out of town.
The hotel is built into and up a cliff face, and due to that, is no use for elderly or young children. The pool is down 3 long flights of winding stone steps, which were dangerous, although a hotel buggy can be booked to take you up and down. We were surprised to find due to being ripped off over everything else, that they did not charge for the buggy, although the driver did expect a tip.
On one day, we booked a pack lunch instead of breakfast as we were going on an early start day trip. That packed lunch is the main memory of our holiday - it was a disgrace. It consisted of two dry bread rolls, which had been left out all night in the lunch pack, two squashed kiwi fruits, and two small bottles of fruit juice. When we complained, we were told that we could have a complementary dinner in the restaurant. Needless to say, when we went for the dinner we were told that the restaurant staff knew nothing about it, and we were charged approximately £25 each for dinner.
When we arrived at the hotel at approx 11 pm after travelling all day, we were told that as the restaurant had closed, they could not provide us with any food whatsoever - not even a sandwich. I think any 4 star hotel could do better than that.
All in all, we enjoyed the week, although we were without a doubt ripped off by an overpriced, out of the way hotel. You would definitely be better staying in another hotel, of which there were many, nearer Taormina which would be of just as good a quality, it not better.