We had a bad experience staying at the villa.
Keesily is a large company with >100 properties, and there are many different people responsible for managing them. It is hit or miss if you get lucky or not. We were in touch with Salvatrice (Salvina), who messaged me on whatsapp a day before the arrival.
Here are the things that went wrong:
- *Check-in late by 1h*. Salvatrice messaged me on whatsapp a day before the arrival to confirm the time (I told her I'm coming at 3pm). She asked me to message her 1h before arriving on the day, when I'm leaving Palermo airport. I messaged her at 2pm on the day, and was at the villa at 3pm. After several messages, a man called Pippo arrived at 4pm (1 hour later). We had to wait in the car for 1h with A/C as it was too hot outside and there was nowhere to hide from the sun. Pippo didn't speak any English, so we communicated over Google Translate. He gave us the keys and asked for 15 euro in cash for registration (1 euro per person per day).
- *Broken bed*. The double bed on the ground floor has broken on the first night. One side of the bed frame just fell off in the middle of the night, so we moved to the bedroom upstairs. I notified Salvatrice and got "ok grazie" response.
- *No hot water*. For the first three days of our stay there were no hot water in the villa. On the first day Salvatrice advised to "keep the tap open for longer" which didn't help. On the second day Salvatrice said the technician would come next day. I also reached out to Keesily directly about hot water problem, and initially they said that hot water was fixed a month ago at the villa. The technician came on the 3rd day and fixed the water. In the meantime I had to boil some water and wash with a bucket.
- *Ants in the bathroom*. They appear at night and not visible during the day. Looks like the infestation is recent, and ants are not coming to other rooms as kitchen or bedrooms yet. It's better to be fixed soon, though.
- *Jakuzzi leaks water*. When the hot water was finally fixed, I tried filling in jakuzzi on the first floor, and found that after filling it in a little, the water leaked on the floor. It is unusable in the current state.
- *Weak Wi-Fi*. Internet is too slow for video streaming. Make sure to pre-download the series you want to watch at night. Signal is weak, it is not possible to connect to Wi-Fi from the living room, only from bedrooms.
- *Stinky washing machine*. The washing machine has a bad smell inside, so be carefull with your laundry. I had to leave my clothes outside for a day to get out of the smell.
- *Check-out*. I let Salvatrice know that we are going to leave at 11am and she said this is ok and we can leave the keys on the table inside when leaving the villa. Pippo and two cleaners arrived at 10:30, rushed into the house and started cleaning, even though we didn't finish moving our stuff to the car. He was very annoyed after seeing a broken bed and was telling me something in Italian that Google Translate didn't understand. He asked my wife to talk over the phone with someone (the manager?) to explain what happened, while I was moving the rest of our bags to the car. It looks like the man on the phone also didn't speak English.
The villa has a potential, though. There are a few nice things about it:
- *Good private location*. There are a few neighbours around you, but you usually don't see and hear them. There is a sea view from the balcony, and there is a fence surrounding the property.
- *Kitchen is fully equipped*. The kitchen has all you need to cook or serve food.
- *Barbecue on site*. Though equipment is in a filthy state and dirty, it is nice to have an opportunity to grill some vegs and meat.
- *Swimming pool*. The pool is spacious and clean, has a working filter built-in.
- *Good A/C*. Even though it was hot outside during our stay, A/C worked just fine and kept the villa cool.