Sicily

RS Sicily guidebook would be useful in your planning

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/lodging-e6b5cfa6-3bd4-46b9-88a3-0714688e42d5

Train connections are fine for those three areas, and along the North and East coast. They suffer a bit in the South and the interior. Buses are always a decent option though to compare to trains.

Taormina though, while near the coast, is perched up on a rocky crag and a shore that strains the use of the word beach. Even the train station is well downhill from the town, necessitating a taxi or bus to get up there. There are some decent beaches just North and South of there in towns. Most I would assume stay in Taormina for the views and the nightlife.

I would check on booking.com and maybe also use GoogleMaps to see the location. You can filter by number of stars, reviews, price, amenities.
Taormina is on a hill, not exactly at the beach, so you may want to look at Giardini Naxos, just 5-10 min drive at the bottom of the hill. There is a decent beach there and I stayed there (I also like beaches).
Right below Taormina there is also Capo Taormina and Mazzarò, but it’s very rocky there, so not much of a beach, mostly cliffs and a very small pebbly beach. There is the Capotaormina hotel with a pool atop the cliff there, if you don’t mind the stiff price.

Maybe best to give a general price limit of the hotels....

Besides price range, as suggested above, you should also share information on whether you intend to have a rental car, because many nice beach hotels are often a bit away from town centers or even out of town altogether.

We have reservations in Castelemare de Golfo at Punta Nord Est. They have a beach that they shuttle you to and provide chairs. In Cefalu we reserved Victoria Palace Hotel and Taormina, Hotel Bel Soggiorno. Al have nice sea views too.

There are one, maybe two trains a day that will get you from the mainland (we started in Salerno) to the port at Villa San Giovanni in Calabria, and then across to Messina in Sicily. We were fascinated at our train car being shunted onto the ferry, then over across the Strait of Messina, to the train station in Messina proper, then onto Taormina. First class on Palm Sunday was 38 Euro for the entire trip, a real bargain. Of course, we did set this up in December 2024 for travel last April.

We stayed at Hotel Bel Soggiorno in Taormina in 2018. It’s halfway up the hill between the beach and town, so not on the beach. It is a less fancy hotel and we enjoyed it. It does afford nice views of both the water and Mt. Etna. It’s breakfast buffet was good and it does have limited free onsite parking. From the hotel it’s a 10 minutes uphill walk to the main part of town.

As far as beaches, I was unimpressed with the one in Taormina; at least the area we sat at by the Mazzarò Sea Palace hotel.

In Cefalù we stayed at Hotel Alberi del Paradiso. It was very nice. While not on the beach it did have a pool, free onsite parking, and ran a free shuttle service into town. It too offered a nice breakfast buffet.