"Firstly, I think you will get good & bad everywhere. My review is purely based on our personal experience of what we thought was the good and bad points.
Checkin - quick smooth and informative. We arrived late so the hotel provided us with sandwiches, fruit and drinks on arrival.
Room - spacious clean and perfect for what we needed for a 10 day stay.
Balcony - in serious need of somewhere to hang wet clothes. Alvor can be very windy and you can lose items hanging over balcony. A small clothes rail would be beneficial.
Food - breakfast fine, plenty to choose from. You will always find something. Lunch fine, good salad bar and always something to eat. Dinners - we always found them a bit poor and tasteless. We ate out a lot of evenings for this reason. There is only the one option for dining if you have kids (the green dining room). No à la cartes. Desserts were (in our opinion) cheapo nasty and not at all tasty.
Shop - there is a shop in hotel sells snacks, towels, toys etc. it’s not over priced like some hotel shops. Staff in shop were lovely.
Ice cream - available from 4pm to 5pm. Make sure you’ve got a tshirt on or won’t be served! No ice lolly’s.
Entertainment - could improve especially for little ones. But the animation team all very friendly. Our little boy loved the face painting.
Park - fantastic for little ones to play and well shaded from the sun. (But…see cleanliness below)
Pools - great! Good size and plenty of loungers.
Staff - some very friendly (bar and animation) some others not so friendly (restaurant and housekeeping). Don’t think one housekeeper said hello to us once during our stay. There is an older gentleman working in restaurant who was not at all friendly.
Minibar non existent in rooms. You are given 1.5l water per day.
Cups - lose the wines glasses in the restaurants for soft drinks!! Just give us all the same size cups for soft drinks as the kids get.
Overall we found this to be a good (if a little basic) all inclusive hotel. We have stayed in much much better all inclusive, but we don’t really think (now that we’ve been) that Alvor is somewhere we would ever go all inclusive again if we went back.
Cleanliness - overall the hotel is very clean and the grounds are well kept.
However, one day during our holiday we had our little one in the park playing. Our child is 6 and there was another child (older than him) who was playing in the park running up and down slides and round and round. Completely oblivious to the fact he had soiled himself…badly! Clearly had a very upset tummy, sorry to be graphic but it was pouring down his legs like water. I immediately grabbed my child off the park. Went to reception and reported it. I said to reception I think you would need to close off the park and really give it a good clean.
I sat for an hour waiting - watching, for someone to come clean the park. Thinking…surely they will close this off. They didn’t. After the hour I went back to reception and told them again, they said it had been cleaned. I said no it hasn’t, that’s why I’m back here. As I sat waiting by the kids pool the child who had soiled himself came along with his parents and proceeded to jump into the baby pool. I grabbed my son again out of the pool and that was enough for us that day. I then seen a lady with a broom…brushing round the park! No slides were closed off.
Honestly - that poor kid clearly had a bad tummy. As for his parents, I’m not sure what they were thinking but they just let him jump into pool. I actually went over to them and said, I think your child is sick. They just completely ignored me. They couldn’t miss the mess!
No other word than disgusting.
I think that park should have been closed and disinfected as soon as I reported a child had a very upset tummy running round the park.
Would we come back to Alvor Baia - no. We don’t tend to go to the same place twice.
If it’s all inclusive you’re after - there are much better ones around."
