Why Reserve with Best of Sicily: If you've never booked reservations online, this is the perfect time to begin. Your credit card information is secure, the service is great and there's usually exceptional room availability because Travel Now reserves blocks of rooms at good rates. A number of travel sites offer similar services, but we've found Travel Now to be the most complete and efficient, and the easiest to use. Navigation and searches are simple, while things like clear hotel location maps are included. Best of all, these special internet rates save you money. Because of the large number of lodging reservations Travel Now processes (through Sabre® and other networks), they are able to negotiate special rates with the properties directly. These rates are lower in most cases than the "normal" rates you would receive by contacting the hotel yourself simply because of Travel Now's exceptional buying power. To secure your reservation, an immediate payment with your credit card is required, though you will not be billed until you actually check in. (The same policy applies to automobile rentals.) This ensures you have a room when you arrive so you are not "bumped" due to "overbooking." Booking your room (or car rental) with Travel Now gives you both savings and security. We considered several online reservation services before integrating this one into Best of Sicily. (Incredibly, most of the Sicily-based sites don't even have English speaking staff to assist with your reservation!) In our opinion, Travel Now is simply the best site of its kind on the web. It's the real deal.

Star Ratings: The star ratings indicated here are those designated for each establishment by the Italian tourism board, with five stars representing the highest general level of quality and services. While we don't spend much time counting stars, they're a good way to compare service and accomodation very generally before clicking over to a more detailed description of a hotel that interests you. The difference between 3-star and 5-star rated hotels may seem fairly obvious, but a difference of one star (for example, between 4-star and 5-star hotels) may be more subtle. How are the hotels ranked? The system can be a little subjective at times (we sincerely believe that the Palmes Hotel in Palermo merits five stars rather than four), but benchmarks include: ratio of full-time staff to guests, number of restaurants and fully-staffed bars in the hotel and meals served, whether there's a dedicated concierge desk, size of larger rooms and suites (and whether there are suites), presence of porterage (bellman service), internet access, number of staff on duty all night, whether there's "room service" of meals, presence of in-house laundry service, availability of parking facilities, extra features (pool, beach, spa), and so forth. Is there a price correlation between stars and euros? Yes, but only in a very general sense, and within a category (4-star hotels, for example) rates may vary considerably. A "superior" 3-star hotel may be generally comparable to a 4-star. And different rating systems (including private ones such as those of the Michelin® publications) may give the same hotel different rankings.

About Our Selections: In late 2007, the fourth year that we offered hotel reservations, we undertook a careful quality review, visiting most of the hotels listed on this page. Customer feedback also played an important part. New establishments were added and others (which we felt did not offer exceptionally high service or quality) were deleted from the list. It's fair to say that this list of about 30 hotels represents a very good selection based on superior service and (particularly for the historic hotels) gracious atmosphere. Try booking with us. You won't be alone. Last year over 9,000 hotel reservations were made through this page.