Hotel Riu Palace Boavista

Another fabulous stay at the Riu Palace in Boa Vista. It is a great hotel and deserves its great ratings. Great staff in all areas, great food, great pools and right on a great beach – what more could you ask for?! It is indeed "No Stress" as the locals say. The staff excel at all times, but it is worth noting that they most definitely did this time during the 2 days of stormy weather – yes, it does rain a little at times – making sure the hotel continued to run as well as normal. Yes, the pool bars were closed at times and the main restaurant had a couple of outside areas closed off – but it all worked with good humour and co-operation from the guests. The food here is great. In the main restaurant, there is a wide range with it largely being cooked in different areas in front of you, so you know it is freshly cooked. It more than suited our needs though we have no special requirements that said. The speciality restaurants (3 of them) are well worth trying to get into at least one during your stay. There are no limits so you may well be able to make several visits – you need to book via the app though reception can probably help too. The drinks are of great variety including many branded options if you ask for them. The coffee bar in the reception is a nice treat at the end of the day. Service in the bars, reception, restaurants is spot on though the pool side of the pool bar can be a bit slow at times, but overall great job by the team. There are 3 excellent pools – 2 with pool bars (1 adult only) and plenty of beds with shades – also plenty on the beach. The surrounds and gardens are kept clean and tidy with staff always working on them and there are plenty of toilets around pools and in the hotel. Spa is well worth a visit – massages are quite cheap and excellent. We did not use the gym but took part in some of the games which was fun. Aqua aerobic is well attended. The beach is superb – clean and soft and you can walk for miles in both directions. Beware there are some rocks in the sea though. Entertainment - nice addition with some live music down at the pool bar in some late afternoons. Early evening live music in the bar was very pleasant but did not tend to listen to the later evening stuff. There is a water park between the Palace and the neighbouring Karamboa - great fun and the adult slides are not heavily used that I could see. Beware - the railings going up the stairs are a little lose in places. The kids area was quite well used. Minor grumbles. The in-room optics are still not branded varieties despite advertising saying they are. Staffing at the pool side of the pool bars was occasionally thin on the ground. But very minor grumbles

Overall this is a good hotel and a good choice for a family holiday. We traveled as a family of 3 and it largely met the requirements. We are big RUI fans and have stayed at various hotels across the world, this hotel is the weakest of the palaces we have stayed at. Check in - we had pre checked in before arriving and joined the RUI class checkin, this took a long time and all other people had checked in by the time we did. We were then told of a delay to accessing our room. The Room- it was basic but met the requirements. When the safe broke they came straight up, when we ran out of conditioner it was topped up when asked. The shower was a different matter I asked for some of the mould to be cleaned off and it was not done. I ended up using a towel and wiping it off as best as I could because when you rubbed against the walls you were covered. Mini bar good and restocked Food- acceptable but nothing special same food every day. I did end up with b&m and I was extra careful with hygiene. The specialist restaurants are good. Drinks- this was the biggest let down compared with other RUI palace. The majority of the drinks were either flat, tasteless or undrinkable. The cocktails were all premixed cheap syrups with no mint for most of the 10 days. Entertainers- in the day nothing really happened but in the evening they tried. Unfortunately they don’t know how to operate the computer system well so the items were either canceled (bingo 3 times) and the karaoke took so long to set up only a few people could sing. The ABBA show is worth a watch, the African show was likened by my husband as a primary school end of term play ( the screeching was unbearable) Pool and sea- all lovely clean and well maintained. Would I return- yes If I had a choice between this hotel and the Sal palace it would be Sal every day of the week. The standards are higher