25/12/2025: Terrible breakfast, little choice, food of poor quality, not at all fresh, typical of a two-star hotel, friendly but unprofessional staff. Neglected outdoor spaces. Villa Politi, a historic hotel, a flagship of Syracuse from the 80s, is now in decline, a great shame.
14/12/2025: A beautiful and historic hotel just a short walk away from the shoreline (highly recommend taking advantage of the park/plaza nearby - the ocean views are stunning!). There’s a grandiose sort of feeling as you approach the building, walking up the marble staircase and into the lobby, which opens up into a large sitting room before it sections off into elevators and smaller hallways. We were here in early December and the hotel had started to decorate for the holidays, which added to the cozy feeling.
Rooms are modest but tastefully and minimally furnished. The shower stall in my room was quite small and certainly not accommodating to those who will be larger or taller or perhaps even claustrophobic. I comically told my friends it was barely big enough to do a full turn in the shower. There is no shelving in the shower - not ideal and an area of improvement for the hotel to consider.
Surrounding noise from the hallways and any rooms next door/nearby is a sizable nuisance as there’s next to zero sound proofing.
Despite the beautiful ambiance of the Grand Hotel Villa Politi, the 2 biggest areas of critique are food related. There is only one restaurant nearby (small cafe/coffee shop of sorts). No shops, no other food options available. The breakfast offering at the hotel is significantly lacking. It is literally 90% carb loaded (room temperature breads, sweets, rolls). So if you like your breads, you’ll be delighted with the enormous array of carbs.
The 2 hot food items (eggs, ham) were not adequately sized to feed a large tour group. It was 2 small trays that kept running out because people were waiting and then quickly depleting whatever was put out. I simply gave up trying to get a hot breakfast. If you know you’re going to have 50+ people dining at breakfast, have enough staff and food to feed that amount of people. The hot entrees set out were **barely** enough to feed 10. Doesn’t make for a pleasant start to the day when you’re waiting for hot food, never receive hot food and the only other majority option is carbs. Hence only 3 star rating from me.
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