DIPDOT O
Big, massive hotel, great room size. Good English breakfast and cereal. However, the pictures online are far from reality on the ground.
The room I was in with my partner had a single bed, and we were made to understand that this is how all the rooms are. We requested that the bed arrangement should be changed to a double size.
The TV remote wasn't working, which made it a bit of a challenge to either switch the TV on or off. We could only have it either way when we were in bed.
The room intercom is not working; you have to go to the reception to pass your message.
If you are not careful, if you close the sliding door behind you on the balcony, hotel staff would have to let you back into your room, depending on the time of the lockout.
The outside pool was quiet, probably due to the period we visited, but the indoor pool was busy, as the kids and adults enjoyed the indoor splash.
As hotel guests, it was also a surprise for me to have to pay €8 to use the gym. Aside from that, should there be an emergency in the gym, there are no clear directions to the emergency exit from the gym.
In my opinion, the rating I would give the facility out of 5 is 3.5.
Mark Alexander
Great hotel, brilliant pool.
Rooms are decent, beds are comfortable. Balcony is big enough, a pool view would have been better. Check in is after 2pm.
Toilet and shower is good.
Overall, it’s a good hotel.
Pool staff are quite strict, you can’t bring your own food or drinks to the pool.
Liam Bee
Came for a 5 night get away in October, would not recommend at all.
On arrival, the hotel reception staff were very friendly, which was nice as we'd had a delayed flight and transfer so it was 2am by the time we got to the hotel. We had to pay a "tourist tax" on arrival, which wasn't expensive, but we didn't know about it before hand.
At 2am, the hotel had nowhere it could provide bottled water, no vending machine, no shop. I had to walk to a kebab shop on the corner of the complex (outside) to buy some water. I thought that was bizarre as they sell weed products in the hotel vending machines, but not water...
The first night, I was too tired to notice just how uncomfortable the bed was, but by night 3 my neck and back did a good job at reminding me. The beds are awful, with sprung mattresses that have well passed their useable life. The bedding was stained and the pillows felt like they were stuffed with socks, the stuffing all separated over night and left me lying in a void with a cricked neck.
The rooms are dated, in fact the entire hotel decor is dated. We stayed in room 745, which faced the outside of the complex. This was fine, but the balcony is seriously unsafe for children. The wall is really low, lhip height for an adult. How the hotel haven't seen falls is beyond me.
Out room was in pretty bad shape, with towel railings broken, only 1 working plug socket (which happens to be above the sink.. there are none near the bed), the TV was damaged with a blue spot in the center. There are tons of switches in the room, like light switches, that don't do anything at all. Working out the lights was ridiculous.
The facilities were pretty bad too. We had a self service room, but decided that the facilities were too poor for us to actually prepare food. Not only that, the room was booked for 3 people, but the table and chairs provided only sat 2 people, and needed dragging about to actually make use of it where it was stored.
The noise in the room was bad, not from outside, but from appliances in the room. The Air-conditioning continuously buzzed, with a super bright "20" that lit up the room shown on the front. The fridge was the loudest fridge in the world, rumbling away every 10minutes, loud enough to wake me up through the night.
The first full day we had, we decided to check out the local area, which is really nice. The beach is amazing, with a lovely sandy beach, amazing restaurants and cafes. If it weren't for the local area, this holiday wouldn't have been a holiday at all. We spent nearly all of our time outside of the hotel.
The one occasion we tried to use the pool was seriously dissatisfying. The outdoor pool is a good size, and deep in places for adults who want to swim, but it is definitely not big enough for the hotel it is supporting and that was really evident as we were there off season and still struggled to get sunbeds.
The sunbed situation is stupid. There are 3 types of bed. Blue ones with adjustable backs that are around the poolside, first come first serve, but not many. White lay-flat ones around the wider area. And some black/grey ones that are fully adjustable that are a bit further away, but face the highpoint of the sun, which the hotel charge €7.50 each for!
Not only this, but the staff were really unhelpful and rude at the poolside. We wanted to buy drinks, but the poolside bar is cash only (and it's cash only for the pool towel hire that they don't provide for free) so we went to the main bar and used card to buy drinks. On going back to the pool, the staff stopped us saying "only drinks bought at the poolside bar van be drank by the pool", which is a stupid rule as surely it's all the same company.
The pool experience was as a let down, not only that, but the pool was full of sand and the water was salty. Really not worth it.
The gym is actually really good, but expensive and not included as a facility with the room (not our package anyway)
The indoor pool looked nice, but another stupid rule of a "swim caps are mandatory" put us off from trying it as the caps were €5.
Ciara Murphy
Amazing stay at the hotel. The staff during the day and night amazing. So friendly and welcoming ♥️♥️♥️. Highly recommend for families. All inclusive is very good. Food is portugese but still very nice and healthy. Bar food very good for children. Highly recommend. Especially because of staff they are amazing 😊😊👌👌♥️
Joanne O Riordan
We had a fabulous family holiday in August 2024. I was nervous as I booked this hotel before reading reviews and some of the reviews are not positive. But, we have been very pleasantly surprised in the last week. The staff at this hotel are super helpful, reception, bar, restaurant and entertainment staff are all great people who obviously love their jobs. The food was pretty good- very nice toasties beside the pool, we were all inclusive so we had a lot of those. We were limited to certain wines, beers but I think that's normal with self included packages. The hotel room was very spacious , we had a two bed apartment and have two teenagers and a little girl so plenty or room which was really comfortable. The apartment was spotlessly clean and was cleaned every day. The main attraction was the pool, which was huge with great activities every day, aqua aerobics, waterpolo, dancing and also a diving area which had 4 different heights. There was a shortage of umbrellas around the pool but this is also a common problem in most holiday hotels. There is a good Spar shop and a holiday type shop in the reception area and both were reasonably priced. The main negative is the need for repair work in some areas of the hotel. There are some cracked tiles in the corridors and around the pool area. Our patio door lock broke while we were there but the maintenance men had it repaired within an hour. Overall, we had fabulous holiday and I would recommend this hotel. if you look past the need for refurbishment, the hotel has a lot of positives.