Hotel Riu Palace Macao

I am not in the habit of leaving reviews as I feel we are all different and have different preferences, however I am going to make an exception for this hotel. The location is like desert island perfect, even if you did get a bit of seaweed at the beach it was cleared. The hotel is stunning as is the whole Riu Palace complex. Food - we never went hungry as there was so much variety and there are 5 restuarants to choose from each serving delicious delights to tempt your taste buds Rooms - Our first room had a lot of humidity and a damp fusty smell but we moved to another room that was great, I would advise people to take the damp/humidity catchers, which we discovered other guests had taken. The rooms are spacious, plenty of storage, optics, fully stocked refrigerator and plenty of clean towels, our room was always well cleaned. Staff - We thought that the greatest strength of this Hotel had to be its staff, who work so hard to make your vacation a memorable experience and with a happy smile. Ok now to the negative bit. We booked this Hotel for some well deserved and needed RnR, however from around 1030hrs most days the entertainment team turned up the volumn then a little later turned up the volumn again and again it was like attending a daytime Rave party, especially when the DJ was shouting down the Mic, all this was focussed around the swim up pool. We declared this pool a no go area for us, the pool water did not look healthy? The type of music played was very repetitive and mostly the same genre, with the F word being heard alot. I appreciate the entertainment team are there to do a job but the Hotel did have other guests who did not want to Rave. Yes I am a person of a certain age I did the 18-30 holidays, Ayia Napa and Ibiza but we booked this Hotel thinking it was a Riu Palace 5* adults only tranquil relaxed getaway and that is definately not what we got.

Some context before I get into the meat and potatoes of my thoughts- I booked this resort for a bachelor party. Before we left my group had a fun time going through the trip advisor reviews because a few of them were a bit extreme and were written by Karens. We are a pretty relaxed bunch but we were surprised to find that some of the complaints were actually valid. most were exaggerated Location- 5/10 this resort is conveniently placed near the casino, the convince store, the night clubs and the Riu party zone. This was very nice. Outside of the hotel amenities I was pretty upset by the amount of seaweed on the beach and the 3 boats obstructing the ocean view. Luckily the bachelor didn’t mind because his preference was to spend time at the pool. Regardless, I was highly disappointed. I understand going to the beach is going to involve sea weed or a few boats but both never left and remained a constant eye sore. Rooms- 8/10 The rooms were one of the best things about this trip. AC worked well and everything was clean. The only negative was that the TVs in both rooms were damaged. Staff- 8.5/10 The people who work here are so awesome! Everyone is always doing their best to make sure you have a great experience and we never ran into someone rude or mean (even though we may have been inebriated enough to warrant this at times). My only complaint here was that a lot of people didn’t speak very good English and that if one us didn’t speak Spanish we would’ve had some issues communicating. While I understand this is the primary language here but when you are marketing primarily to tourists it’s probably a good idea that at the very least everyone at the front desks has at least some proficiency in English Food- 2/10 Ouch the food was bad. It was so bad that I will never ever come back. For context I am a very fat man and I didn’t get this way skipping meals or being discerning with my food choices- especially while drinking. The food was genuinely so bad everyone was skipping meals and by the time we saw Wendy’s and Taco Bell at the airport we all celebrated. Some of the items were decent but it was consistently bad and the occasional good food item became a surprise. Overall- 5.75/10 This was really a fun trip for what it was but we were all very ready to leave. I think everyone was glad this wasn’t like a romantic getaway or a big trip with an 8 hour flight associated with it. A lot of the guests were from England and I think if I had a long flight from somewhere like that i would’ve been very upset with the food situation. I would recommend this trip to a group similar to ours where fun is the main attraction, not the amenities and for around 3 days time.