This is generally well-managed, but could be so much better with a few improvements. We stayed for 10 nights in a 2-bedroom villa. The villa was generally clean, though quite dated. The reception staff were very friendly and very willing to help with any problems, except that there shouldn't have been problems! There was one restaurant / bar staff, who never smiled and and was always grumpy The bathroom smelled of sewage most of the time, which was very unpleasant. The beds weren't great, and were so short my feet hung over the end (I'm not very tall). While the rooms and bathroom were cleaned 5 days a week, I don't think they changed the bed linen. The internet is only available by renting a Wifi router from reception (€1/day), but they don't have many -- we asked for one when we made the initial booking and we got the last one. But the internet was pretty slow, I was often switching it off and using my phone. Clientele is very international, with most guests (I think) Portuguese - there were Germans, French and Dutch and Irish, and a few Brits. The pool is nice, but in the afternoons, and especially at weekends it got very crowded, with lots of non-guests driving up with their cars. The hotel sometimes checked our guest cards to make sure we were guests, but not very often, and it seems the wider town took advantage of that -- I told the reception we didn't appreciate our hotel being used as a municipal pool. The sun umbrellas can't be moved, and are pretty small, so lots of people moved the chairs to be under the shade of the trees. Breakfast was fine, but only open 8:30-10:30, so if you have an excursion with an early pickup, you will miss out. The evening buffet was also fine, though the restaurant was devoid of atmosphere, and sometimes had weird music (like a loud DJ playing house music at 8:00PM when it was mostly families!) The local Cabanas town is very nice with some nice restaurants, and there was a Fisherman festival on at the time. The beach was easy to get to with the dedicated boat service, and is a great beach, but only one bathroom, which isn't very much for such a well-used beach. The beach restaurant fills up fast (I couldn't get food there), and the beach chair rental is expensive (€23 for 2 chairs and a parasol), but if you bring your own sandwiches, it's fine. Tavira town was a €9 Uber ride away, and also very pretty, with lots of evening music festivals on. If the hotel refurbished the rooms to a more modern standard with better beds, fixed the sewage issues, put bigger sun umbrellas round the pool, had better security to restrict the pool for guests only, and put proper Wifi in, this would be a lovely place, but unfortunately, this fell a bit short of that.
- tree507
Lovely hotel Our bathroom and kitchen area looked like it had been upgraded quite recently. We had a studio apartment but had a good amount of space with a nice balcony. Food at the bar was nice. Reception staff are lovely and helpful. Overall very clean rooms. We were a bit disappointed with the lack of sunbeds - they definitely need quite a few more sunbeds and umbrellas. Some days the pool is absolutely crammed, especially later in the afternoon. The sunbeds and the patio around the pool didn’t seem to be cleaned the regularly. Grounds are really pretty. Really close to the beach, 10 min walk to the boat taxis. Lovely clean beach. 15 minute walk from the train station. Two supermarkets really close by. We’d love to come back again, we had a great trip.