Hotel Riu Madeira 4*

An interesting start to our reception welcome mat Riu Madeira ”where is your voucher, we need a voucher!” Now I had a fair idea what the receptionist was talking about but Jet2 never mentioned anything about having to present a voucher on arrival at the Riu Madeira, or maybe I missed the hint in the wealth of information Jet2 supply! Anyway, that was sorted out and we had a quick bite in the buffet. Pleasant staff, keen to explain everything to new arrivals. I should add here that this holiday was a bit of an experiment, having been using a certain chain of Greek/ Spanish resorts for many years and were keen to compare Ik** to a good reviewed 4*. Bearing in mind that this total holiday price was much cheaper than Ik** price for the same period. I was not optimistic after the faff about the voucher but having been shown up to the room my attitude softened. À very decent sized room, tea/ coffee and a kettle available, decent balcony with a “lateral view of the sea”, a very useful fixed clothes drying frame attached to the wall, a small table and a couple of chairs, balcony spoiled only by a couple of very solid pillars at the front! A spare couple of continental sockets in the room and two usb sockets by the bed, IT charging solved! WiFi was a reasonable 78Mbps in the room. No issues with the WiFi anywhere in or out of the hotel. Plenty of coat hangers and drawer space, a safe in the wardrobe and no charge for it unlike many other hotels. The hotel stay was looking good, until I went to use the shower; extremely thin bath towels, bathrobes à bit small and à hair and body wash which left a bit to be desired, shower floor like a skating rink when wet. Apart from that it was a good size bathroom. Off for a look around: called in at Reception with a couple of queries, “towels are all the same “ when new ones requested, bathrobes, “ sorry, no bigger sizes”. Could I have a bath mat to prevent me bouncing off the shower floor? “Sorry, hygiene health and safety reasons preclude us from preventing the possibility of you slipping and breaking a bone in the shower! “ Hmm, one up for the 5*, who supply bath mats without question. Tried to book the à la carte for the Monday, sorry, closed on Sunday and Monday but Tuesday was available! Booked the hotel bus for a visit to Funchal, very handy! Investigated the steam room, a bit tricky to find, situated down a corridor outside the indoor pool, it was quite a decent steam room when I eventually used it, the only pain having to go down to the pool side to hand in my card( 10 euro charge if lost!) to get yet another thin towel. Do they honestly believe that people will make off with their towels? Pepe’s Food, quite a pleasant cafe/ snack bar located by the main pool. A glass of red , decent coffee and a snack. Pool and surrounds were quite busy but plenty of spare sun beds. The buffet; a fair variety of food. It all just seemed so ordinary! There wasn’t one main dish which stood out. Perfectly edible stuff but no “wow”. Hot dishes were packed together in the hot servers area. Desserts I have to say were top notch, large selection and very tasty. The wine offered was palatable. Invariably very busy but the staff coped well. Mostly self service of course, the coffee from the machine was much better than the coffee offered in a flask at breakfast. The à la carte. Very pleasantly surprised by the excellent standard of food on offer. The 3 waiting staff fairly rattled around to keep things going. A bit of a production line for the food courses. The “ Warm Octupus salad” had the most seafood fillings of any similar item I have ever eaten! The tuna steak was oversized but cooked to perfection, I felt quite guilty with a tuna steak of such proportions. The beef skewer suffered from the affliction of every beef dish we tried in the resort, chewy! Excellent meal apart from the beef. A variety of entertainment every night of differing standards, the lobby bar staff coped very well with occasionally busy periods. Plenty of seating inside and out. One unfortunate aspect of this hotel is that it is not totally non smoking so you have to endure cigarette smoke if someone decides to smoke on their nearby balcony. The cleaning staff did an excellent job, leave the “ ready for cleaning” tag on the door and the cleaning was always completed before we returned. I was very pleasantly surprised by everything in this hotel: good attitude all round from the staff, no shortages of staff or supplies. I think I would try a Sea View room if I returned. So quite a bit cheaper and difference in standards than our Greek/Spanish 5* resorts but if you forget the standard of the towels it’s definitely worth a visit.

Our second visit to Madeira, and to take nothing from the island as a destination; it is stunningly beautiful and the people are absolutely lovely - bar none that we’ve met. The hotel is situated on the foreshore, with a decent promenade before the stony beaches. Having previously stayed at the Vile Gale in Santa Cruz, and having a poor experience for one of us who is a vegetarian, we decided to pick a known brand hotel with RIU. We booked a Double Room as there were no other options on the Jet2holidays site at the time, or for our stay. That room put us in the basement of the hotel two floors down along a depressingly long corridor with repeated pencil prints to break the vast expanse of corridor up. Weirdly the decor is out of the late 80’s with dark wooden doors and architrave around them. The room was pleasant overall, I’ve no complaint with it or the beds which were comfortably firm. The dark wood theme carried into the hallway and the wardrobes, which was jarring but fine. When we got in the room it was hot at around 25ºC; I didn’t really understand why it had not been left to cool given we arrived very early and spent a few hours waiting for it to be ready - we did get there at 11AM so I didn’t not expect it to be ready at that time. Annoyingly the ceiling fan was super noisy in the room, and the water bottles delivered to the room, once put in the mini bar fridge, we realised that did not work in spite of it being set to low - so no chilled water either, but still kicking heat into the room! The food is good overall, the standard is good and the selection is very good; judged from a vegetarians standpoint; all too often we get presented with the same thing night after night for one of us when it’s a poor experience. Beers and wines are fine, but apart from that it’s really poor. Sadly because this is only All Inclusive, there’s no option to say “please can i pay for a decent [rum/baileys/whatever]” instead of the junk they’re giving away “included”. It’s not that it’s just rough booze, it’s that at best it’s syrup. This is the side of all inclusive that I hate - when they cut the costs so much to the bone, that the experience is poor. I expect that from a 3*, but at this premium it really is galling for the £2k price tag for 4 nights; off season! The parking is not included on the hotel property; that’s €8/day, which adds up quickly and I found pretty miserly. All in all, I don’t expect fall at your feet luxury from the places we stay, but I also despise lowest-common-denominator offerings like this. How do you tell? Easy - when you go for breakfast, is it actually fresh orange juice? Generally, we’ve found that to be the best benchmark of standards at a hotel - and this is anything but fresh for any breakfast juices!