Diogo Silva
Pros:
Very nice location, right next to the beach in a quiet area. You can just walk to the beach without having to worry about distance, parking, driving.
Huge swimming pool outside.
Breakfast buffet offered a great variety, dinner buffet as well (but some dishes were hit/miss).
Room was spacious.
Service was friendly.
Cons:
There are no restaurants nearby, so if you want to eat outside you have to drive to the nearest town.
They have an indoor wellness that you have to pay to access (20€ for 3h). You get access then to a better indoor swimming pool, relaxation area, sauna, steam room, jacuzzi. I find this price unreasonable. As an hotel guest, one should have access for free to this area (reservations are understandable to avoid a crowded place, but charging an additional 20€ for just 3h, it is a bad practice).
There is another indoor pool that is accessible to everyone, but as you don't need to reserve and there are kids allowed, it doesn't allow for proper relaxation and/or swim adequately. Also, you are required to wear a swimming cap.
Paloma Brighton
We had an amazing stay in late December early January.
Hotel is VERY family friendly with daily children’s activities and an outdoor pool special for children. The indoor open access pool was mostly used by children and families.
However, if you are not travelling with children you may find there are many.
If you are hoping for adults only privacy we recommend booking the ‘spa’ pass for 3 hours a day (which includes : separate pool, jacuzzi, sauna and hammam).
The spa was a highlight of our trip.
We appreciated the senses friendly lighting and good sound insulation between rooms. Helped our stay remain calm and relaxing ! Overall the hotel is visually pleasing in design
The all you can eat Ocean Buffet was a solid 7/10. Big pro : Buffet is dietary restrictions friendly with clear allergen markers.
10/10 for hygiene and cleaning of the rooms and hotel overall. Wonderful service from cleaning staff.
Staff were INCREDIBLE, polite and helpful and fun !
laura heslop
Straight away, from parking outside the lobby we were assisted with our bags while my husband parked the car in the hotel car park.
The porter was so nice and helpful.
The receptionist was incredibly warm also. In fact throughout our stay we were greeted and treated very well.
Bernard Sidebottom
Excellent hotel in enviable location, fronting lovely wife beach with rolling waves & adjacent to amazing biodiversity of flora & fauna, especially bird life in adjacent nature park.
The rooms are sumptiously spacious & well appointed. Very nice & varied food, along with understated, efficient & friendly staff.
Appreciate a five star hotel, overall felt that if the alcoholic drinks were slightly more conservatively priced, clients would have consumed a little more in the evenings which may have added to the hotel's revenues, & allowed residents to spend more, relax & perhaps enjoy their evenings more, again some form of entertainment maybe three evenings a week rather than once or twice would have helped, as there is little else nearby in the lovely natural local vicinity.
Really enjoyed my ten night stay.
Have already booked to return to the same hotel for 21 days in February 2024 & planning to tour the Algarve by car.
Ricardo Rodrigues
We were in for the new year's party, for 2 nights. Rooms are good, been here before, always enjoyed them. Spacious, comfortable, shower is great temp and pressure. The staff is very nice, although I was meant to have gotten a call about something, that never happened. I was asked at checkout about it, didn't even know. Other than that and slow response on WhatsApp customer service, no other complaints.
Indoor pool is large and has lots of beds but the chlorine smell is way too strong, I couldn't be in the area for long. The spa pool is better in this regard but is in a paid access area.
Turkish bath, sauna and jacuzzi, in this area, are great.
Breakfast buffet is quite varied, good quality overall. Only complaint is that the bacon seems to be cooked in seed oils, terrible if that's true.
Dinner buffet on a normal day was decent but anything that is cooked live, is with loads of seed oils and I don't see any alternative, terrible was I avoid them like the plague (that they are). On a 5 start I expected cooling with proper ingredients, not cheap, unhealthy seed oils.
The NYE party dinner was disappointing for the drink choices, cheap wine options, food was not great either and the seed oil issue remained on live cooking. The worst, by far, was really the organization. People were queuing around the buffet as if that's a queue, which is not, people should queue for want they want to get, not around the whole buffet. You could see the dissatisfaction look on everyone's faces but no one, apart from me and family members, did anything to avoid this. The staff should've intervened immediately but they didn't even rtthe problem as it seems. Ultra disappointing. Live singing (not band) during dinner was nice but a 5 star would deserve a full band, and a repertoir that wasn't fully repeated from the previous night (the woman is an amazing singer and they add add a few songs after rehashing all of the previous night's ones).
after waiting outside for 20-30 mins for fireworks was not a great idea, it was cold. DJ party was alright but the cashier didn't get orders right as he didn't even speak Portuguese. Would've expected a better party at a 5 star at that price point. We've been to others and significantly better.
Next day brunch was not included, again, for the price, didn't make sense. Also the checkout time was 11, despite being after the party night, which makes zero sense to me. One didn't even have the option to go for brunch instead of breakfast. The brunch cost was an eye watering 34€ per person, even for small 11 year olds. We didn't attend. They did let us stay at the hotel after checkout and checkout slightly late but after a party at least a 1/2pm late checkout included would be absolutely normal.
All in all not a 5 star delivery and I don't believe we're ever coming back for NYE.