IGV Club Baia Samuele
IGV Club Baia Samuele is a four-star Italian holiday village on the far south coast of Sicily, set behind a fine-sand Blue Flag beach near Scicli in the Baroque Val di Noto. Full board, most sports and a children's programme built around a nursery for babies and toddlers are folded into the price, so a family can settle into one self-contained resort for the week.
On this page
Is it worth it?
The quick read: who it suits, what's in the price and the facts to skim first.
IGV Club Baia Samuele is a mid-market Italian villaggio, the local word for an all-in-one holiday village, run on full board with mineral water and house wine at meals and most sports and children's clubs in the price. It draws mainly Italian families and fills up in peak summer. The setting is out on its own: the nearest town is a ten-minute drive and there's no shop on site for everyday essentials, so it suits a family happy to stay put for the week rather than one planning daily trips out. Some guests feel the price sits a little high for what you get, and it isn't sold as a package by UK tour operators, so you'd book flights and the resort separately. The children's provision is what makes it worth a look for families with a baby or toddler, the nursery in particular.
Best for
You want one self-contained beach-and-clubs week with strong childcare for a baby or toddler, and you're happy to treat the Baroque towns and the beach walk as a bonus.
Maybe not for
You want easy day trips to Etna or Taormina, all-day drinks and a five-star finish or a UK package you can book in one go.
Best ages
Babies upwards. A nursery from birth to two, then clubs by age band through to seventeen, all included.
What stands out
The nursery: a 24-hour bottle room, its own pool and extra childcare consultants in July and August.
What to check
That the clubs run on your dates, and that you've packed nappies and any formula, since the nursery stocks neither.
Where is it?
At Punta Sampieri near Scicli, on Sicily's far south coast, about an hour and a half from Catania airport.
Quick facts for families
What the resort is like
Where it sits, how it's laid out and what that means for getting around with young children.
Baia Samuele is a single self-contained village rather than a hotel with add-ons. Italians call this style of property a villaggio turistico, and the nearest UK comparison is a holiday-park village like Center Parcs rather than an à la carte hotel: one price covers the room, the food, most of the sport and the children's clubs, all on one gated site, rather than a hotel you top up with extras as you go. Pastel low-rise buildings sit across lawns and gardens, with streets and walkways running between them, and inside there's a mix of antique-style furniture, mosaic tile floors and wide arched hallways. The grounds are well kept, and several accounts find the room interiors more dated than the gardens outside. It's a spread-out village you walk around rather than a compact block.
The beach is about 150 m from the sea-facing Hotel Club building and 400 m from the centre of the village, on foot or by a shuttle that runs from 09:00 to 19:00. Two of the room types are worth knowing about before you book with young children: the Cottage and Cottage Deluxe are duplex units on two floors, with stairs inside the room, while the Hotel Club rooms sit in a two-storey block with a lift, each on one level. More on all of these below.
The resort sits on its own stretch of coast. The nearest town is a ten-minute drive, and the on-site shops named run to a bazaar, a boutique and gift outlets, none of them described as selling nappies, formula or baby food. It's worth packing a top-up supply of those, or planning a supermarket stop in Modica or Scicli on the way in. For the wider island, its beaches and when to go, see our Sicily guide.
One thing that can confuse a booking: some sites list the resort as Amarestyle iGV Club Baia Samuele. That's a reseller's catalogue name for the same hotel, not a different or rebranded property.
Every restaurant and bar
The two restaurants, how the beach one is booked, and where the children eat.
Two restaurants are named consistently across the resort's own pages, and those are the two to plan around.
Ristorante Centrale is the main buffet, in two air-conditioned rooms with outdoor terraces, and it serves breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. Mineral water and a carafe of local house wine come with every meal. Seating is walk-in until it fills, which suits young children well, since there's no set menu to negotiate and you build a plate to taste.
Ristorante a Mare is the beach restaurant, open at lunch only, with a buffet of starters and vegetables alongside pizza and grilled meat and fish. Booking is free but compulsory and given out on a rotation, so you're allocated a slot rather than choosing a day. It closes one day a week, so check which day when you book. Beachside pizza and grills is an easy lunch with children, as long as you remember it's lunchtime only.
For drinks, the resort has several bars, including one named Rosa dei Venti, plus a piano bar in the evening.
The children's clubs each have their own dining room and a paediatrician-approved menu, so club-age children can eat there rather than in the main restaurants. For family meals in the buffets, high chairs are offered in the nursery's own dining room on request; they aren't confirmed for the Ristorante Centrale or Ristorante a Mare, so ask when you arrive if you'll need one. There's no dress code.
How the beach restaurant booking works
Ristorante a Mare takes a free but compulsory booking, given out on a rotation, so you eat there on the days you're allocated rather than whenever you fancy. It's lunch only and shuts one day a week. The buffet Ristorante Centrale needs no booking and covers every meal every day, so it's the reliable fallback.
Rooms and suites
Every room type and who it sleeps, the two main pools and the Blue Flag beach below.
There are 320 rooms in five categories. The rooms don't come with published floor sizes, which is normal for an older Italian villaggio, so the table below describes each by how it's laid out and who it sleeps rather than by square metres. Every room has air conditioning, a TV with Sky channels, a minibar or mini-fridge, a safe, a hairdryer and a private balcony, veranda or terrace.
| Room | Sleeps | Layout | Good to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cottage | 2 to 3, with room for a 4th bed | A two-storey duplex in the gardens, with internal stairs | The entry-level room. A few interconnecting Cottages exist, so ask early if you need them. |
| Cottage Deluxe | 2 to 4 | A renovated two-storey duplex, with internal stairs | Adds Sky channels, and some rooms have paid Wi-Fi. A higher-capacity, renovated Cottage, the better choice for a family of four wanting one room rather than two interconnecting Cottages. |
| Hotel Club | 2 to 3 | One level, in a two-storey sea-facing block with a lift | Closest to the beach path and the Caribbean pool. A small terrace and a room phone with an internet connection option. |
| Suite | 4 (a double plus two sofa beds) | A bedroom and a separate living room | The living room gives a napping baby or toddler a space of their own. Hydromassage shower. |
| Super Suite | 4 (a double plus two sofa beds) | A bedroom and a separate living room | The top tier, adding a whirlpool bath, a double sink and a 24-inch TV. Each Super Suite is themed to a different world city: New York, Tokyo, Nairobi or Paris. |
For a family, the layout matters more than the tier. The Cottage and Cottage Deluxe are duplex units on two floors, so there are stairs inside the room, worth a thought with a toddler who's just started climbing or a heavy buggy to carry up. The Hotel Club rooms are each on one level in a two-storey block with a lift, and they're the closest to the beach and to the Caribbean freshwater pool. The Suite and Super Suite add a separate living room with two sofa beds, which gives a napping baby or toddler a space away from where the adults sit up. Interconnecting rooms exist but only in the Cottage category, and there are only a few, so ask early if you need them. Pets aren't allowed, and under-eighteens can't stay without an adult.
Full board runs from dinner on your arrival day to lunch on your departure day.
Pools and water features
The resort has two main pools plus a whirlpool, and each of the two youngest children's clubs has its own pool. The semi-Olympic pool is the main one. The Caribbean pool is a second, separate freshwater pool, near the Hotel Club rooms. There's also a shared whirlpool. Inside the children's areas are a nursery pool for the under-twos and a freshwater pool in the Mini Club for the six-to-tens. There are no water slides, no splash pad and no shallow beach-entry toddler pool beyond the two club pools. No source confirms any of the pools is heated. Guests are mixed on upkeep: the pools get praised for their size, while some reviews report dirty solarium areas and maintenance that's slipped.
The beach
The beach is fine sand, backed by dunes the resort itself describes as African in character, and it holds a Blue Flag, the European award for water quality and beach management, for 2026, its third year running alongside the neighbouring Punta Pisciotto and Costa di Carro stretches of the same coastline, with the flag raised at a ceremony on 26 June 2026. The sea slopes in gently, which the resort states plainly and which is what you want with small children paddling. It's about 150 m from the Hotel Club rooms and 400 m from the village centre, on foot or by the daytime shuttle. Umbrellas, sun loungers and deckchairs are included; beach towels are a paid extra. There's a sailing centre, a gazebo, the Mini Club's beach base, a beach bar and the Ristorante a Mare down on the sand. At the eastern end stands the Fornace Penna, an old brick-kiln ruin worth the short walk along the shore; more on that below.
Babies and toddlers
The nursery and clubs from birth up, everything that fills a family day, and the days out beyond the gate.
This is the part of the resort that stands out for the Tilly Travels reader. The whole children's programme is called AIGO, an IGV Club scheme staffed by trained children's workers and running 09:30 to 21:30, and every age band from the nursery up is included in the price. The nursery in particular goes well beyond what most mid-market Sicilian villaggi offer.
The nursery, for babies and toddlers up to two
The nursery takes children from birth up to their third birthday, run by qualified nurses. The IGV Club nursery programme holds recognition from SIN, the Italian Society of Neonatology, a standard applied across the group's villaggi including here. It's laid out as a set of rooms, each with a job:
- an air-conditioned nap room with an intercom;
- a changing room stocked with wipes, creams, high-factor sun cream, bubble bath, shampoo, talc and emollient. It does not stock nappies, so bring your own;
- a 24-hour bottle room with a kitchen, a microwave, a steam steriliser, a bottle and food warmer and a blender, plus jarred and freeze-dried baby food, biscuits, small pasta, yoghurt and more. The milk here is non-artificial, which means it isn't infant formula, so if your baby is formula-fed you'll need to bring your own;
- a dining room where a specialist chef works with a paediatrician, with at least one parent present, any dish puréed or blended on request and a high chair or child-sized table on hand;
- a playroom with indoor and outdoor space and its own pool for the youngest, with pushchairs, baby baths, potties, toilet-training seat reducers and bottle warmers to borrow.
A paediatrician is on hand free during clinic hours and on call around the clock. In July and August, two extra childcare consultants join, trained through a Milan school called Scuola in fasce; they advise parents and run sensory play, aquatic taster sessions, baby massage and music therapy for the under-threes. A pushchair loan is free, subject to availability.
The clubs run to 21:30, so younger children are looked after into the evening and you can eat while they're there. For a child-free dinner past 21:30, ask the resort whether it can arrange any childcare later than that, as we found nothing confirmed beyond the clubs’ hours.
The clubs, by age
Baby Club, for three to fives, runs the same 09:30 to 21:30 hours, with an optional shower break from 18:00 to 19:00. The days are craft, drawing, modelling and group games, with first swimming lessons from qualified instructors and two pools split by how confident a child is in the water. Children eat in their own AIGO restaurant with its own chef, so parents don't need to be there, and there are themed dress-up evenings.
Mini Club, for six to tens, has its own area with a restaurant, an arena, a freshwater pool, mini-basketball and a video and games library. Sport is coached by qualified instructors here, sometimes alongside a visiting sports name: swimming, tennis, sailing, football, basketball, archery, fencing and dance.
Junior Club (11 to 13) and Young Club (14 to 17) add excursions, sport, theatre, dance and themed evenings, with the Young Club leaning more into multimedia and digital projects and staying entirely optional. Both age groups can take diving courses and work towards a diving certificate.
On resortThings to do
Plenty is included. Group courses cover sailing in catamarans, tennis, archery, fitness and aqua gym, with spinning added in July and August. Free to use whenever you like are five-a-side football, boules, beach volleyball, beach tennis, beach football, basketball, volleyball, table tennis and canoes. There are several tennis courts. Paid extras run to night tennis, seasonal pilates and, in July and August, private tennis lessons.
By day, staff run games and tournaments on the beach and around the pool. In the evening come amphitheatre shows, cabaret, musicals and comedy exclusive to IGV Club, followed by dancing at the piano bar. For shopping there's a bazaar, a boutique, local craft and artisan goods, a newsagent and tobacconist, a photographer, jewellery and an art gallery, though none of them named as stocking baby essentials.
The wellness centre, around 1,000 m² and charged separately, has a thalassotherapy pool, hydrotherapy, a Kneipp foot-bath circuit, aromatherapy, sensory showers, thermal-mud treatments, a herbal-tea lounge and relaxation area, a gym, massages from traditional styles to shiatsu and ayurveda, plus a Finnish sauna and a Turkish hammam. Reviews single it out as elegant and spotlessly clean.
Off the parkThe area and days out
Fornace Penna, at the eastern edge of the beach, is an early-twentieth-century brick-kiln ruin and one of the best-known filming locations in the Inspector Montalbano television series, where it stands in as La Mannara. The building is fenced off for safety, but the beach and clifftop around it are open, and the walk along the shore to it is an easy outing, particularly towards sunset.
Inland are the three Baroque towns of the Val di Noto, a UNESCO World Heritage area of ornate churches and grand palazzi: Scicli, the resort's own municipality; Modica, about six miles (10 km) away and known for its distinctive cold-worked chocolate; and Ragusa with its old town Ibla, about 25 miles (40 km), so thirty minutes to an hour by car. Syracuse is roughly forty to fifty minutes north-east, with its flat, compact island old town of Ortigia, home to Sicily's UNESCO-listed puppet-theatre tradition. Noto, Piazza Armerina with its Roman mosaics and Caltagirone with its ceramics all sit on the resort's excursions list and within day-trip reach. The same paid excursions list, bookable through the resort against a minimum group size, also runs to the Castello di Donnafugata (a fortified country estate inland), a coastal tour by light aircraft and local wine tasting. Malta comes up as a catamaran excursion, which needs a valid passport or ID card.
Two of Sicily's headline sights are a longer haul from here than from the island's east. Mount Etna and Agrigento's Valley of the Temples are both on the excursions list, but each is an hour and a half to two hours or more away. If day trips to Etna or Taormina are the point of your holiday, a base nearer Catania suits better; see our Sicily guide for those. Baia Samuele works best as a self-contained week on the south coast, with the Baroque towns and the beach walk as extras rather than the main plan.
Loves and gripes
What families rate and what frustrated them, how it compares, the journey in and the weather by month.
Across many reviews, the beach, the children's provision and the staff come up again and again as the best of the resort. Two things split opinion. Cleanliness is one, and the two sides don't agree: several detailed reviews describe mould, insects and maintenance that's slipped in the rooms and around the pools, yet Booking.com's own Cleanliness category sits high at 9.0 out of 10, so a strong aggregate score sits alongside specific, detailed complaints rather than one picture winning out. Value is the other, with a fair few feeling the price sits a little high for what's delivered. Across TripAdvisor, Booking.com and the Italian villaggio site QVillaggi it rates consistently well, around four out of five; on Booking.com specifically it sits at 8.7 out of 10 and ranks 8th of 21 hotels in Sampieri, seen in search results checked 2 July 2026.
What families love
- The beach and sea, the element guests praise most.
- The nursery, the 24-hour bottle room and the Mini Club, singled out as the real added value.
- The staff, especially the children's and entertainment teams.
- The wellness centre, called elegant and spotlessly clean.
- The amphitheatre evening shows and dancing at the piano bar.
- A generous breakfast.
Common gripes
- Cleanliness, the most common complaint, though far from universal.
- Rooms and fittings that feel dated, and old lifts.
- Food that some rate well and others find repetitive or reduced.
- Isolation, with no walkable town and no shop for essentials.
- A manure smell from a nearby farm near the entrance, from one detailed account.
- A sense from some that the price runs high.
How it compares
IGV Club is the villaggio brand of IGV Hotels, part of Gruppo iGrandiViaggi in Milan, and Baia Samuele is one of six Italian IGV Club villaggi. It sits in the mid-market Italian-village bracket alongside places like Grand Palladium Sicilia and Nicolaus Club Fontane Bianche, below the luxury tier of a resort like Verdura.
Against Grand Palladium Sicilia, on the north coast, the trade is clear: Grand Palladium is a five-star all-inclusive with all-day drinks and a lighter baby club, from age one for about ninety minutes a day, while Baia Samuele's edge is a full-day nursery for the under-twos with the SIN-recognised programme and the 24-hour bottle room. VOI Arenella is another Sicilian option with a nursery for the under-twos, though without the same paediatric-society recognition, so the nursery here is a real point of difference.
Set against the bases our Sicily guide recommends around Taormina, Catania and Syracuse, Baia Samuele is the more self-contained, further-south choice, with the big-name sights a longer drive. It's also one of the few resorts on this site not sold as a UK package.
Getting thereGetting there
Catania (airport code CTA) is the practical gateway, about 78 miles (125 km) and around an hour and a half by road, with direct UK flights on easyJet, Ryanair, Jet2 and British Airways. Comiso (CIY) is closer, about 29 miles (47 km), but it has no current UK routes, so it isn't a realistic option from home. Palermo is on the far side of the island and too far to consider.
No UK operator we checked sells it as a package, so the usual route is to book Catania flights and the resort separately, direct with iGrandiViaggi or through Booking.com, Expedia or Agoda. That's a bit more planning than a package, so allow for it. Standard stays run Sunday to Sunday from June to September. For entry rules, Italy is in the Schengen area, and the passport and travel-advice detail sits in our Sicily guide rather than here.
When to goWeather
The children's programme is confirmed for 7 June to 13 September 2026, and that window is effectively the family season: outside it the resort may still open, but the clubs and nursery that make it worth the trip aren't guaranteed. Within it, June and September sit either side of the peak, warm with a warm sea but without the July and August heat and crowds. The figures below are long-term monthly averages for this coast.
| Month | Daytime high | Overnight low | Rain | Wet days | Sea temp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 15° | 10° | 98 mm | 10 | 15° |
| February | 15° | 9.5° | 110 mm | 10 | 15° |
| March | 16.5° | 11° | 78 mm | 9 | 15° |
| April | 19° | 13° | 65 mm | 9 | 16° |
| May | 21.5° | 16° | 36 mm | 4 | 19° |
| June | 26° | 20° | 18 mm | 2 | 23° |
| July | 29° | 23° | 7 mm | 1 | 27° |
| August | 29.5° | 23.5° | 32 mm | 2 | 28° |
| September | 27° | 21.5° | 65 mm | 5 | 26° |
| October | 24° | 18° | 106 mm | 8 | 23° |
| November | 20° | 15° | 118 mm | 10 | 20° |
| December | 16.5° | 11.5° | 124 mm | 12 | 17° |
Typical monthly averages from weather-station records. Sea temperature is the open-water figure, so a sheltered bay can feel a degree or two warmer. This true south-coast spot runs marginally warmer at night and a little drier; the children's clubs are confirmed for 7 June to 13 September 2026.
Questions
The things families ask most, the official pages worth a bookmark and when this was last checked.
Is it sold as a UK package holiday?
Not that we could find. None of the major UK operators we checked sells it, so you’d book flights to Catania and the resort direct rather than buying one operator package, and leave a little more planning time than a package needs.
When do the children’s clubs actually run?
They’re confirmed running 7 June to 13 September 2026. If your dates fall outside that window, check directly that the nursery and clubs are open before you book.
Do we need to bring nappies and formula?
Yes to both. The nursery’s changing room stocks creams and wipes but not nappies, and the milk in the bottle room isn’t infant formula, so pack your own supply of each.
Will a duplex Cottage work with a baby?
The two Cottage types are duplexes with a staircase inside the room, so with a young stair-climber or a heavy buggy a single-level Hotel Club room or a Suite is the easier choice.
Do we need a hire car?
You can have a car-free week on site, since everything’s included. A hire car helps if you want to reach the Baroque towns, eat out beyond the resort or stock up on baby essentials, none of which are within walking distance.
See more of IGV Club Baia Samuele
Open the IGV Club Baia Samuele photo gallery →Useful links
- IGV Club Baia Samuele: the resort's own site for rooms, the children's clubs and what's included.
- GOV.UK Italy travel advice: entry rules and safety updates before you travel.
- Sicily with little ones: our guide to the wider island, its beaches and when to go.
To book or ask directly, call the resort on +39 0932 848 111 (or group reservations on +39 02 29046565), or email [email protected].
Last updated 16 July 2026.
