Pestana Blue Alvor Beach Hotel

I normally don’t leave negative reviews, and before coming here I read a mixture of excellent and poor reviews. Many people said to ignore the bad ones, but after spending two nights here, I honestly feel they were accurate.

As a family, we stay in 5-star hotels regularly, and this hotel is nowhere near a 5-star standard. In my opinion, it would struggle to be rated as a 4-star hotel.

The rooms themselves are reasonable, but there are many things you simply expect from a 5-star hotel that are missing. Charging €7.50 to borrow an iron is something I’ve never experienced before, and the alternative is to use a communal ironing room downstairs, meaning you have to iron your clothes there and then carry them back to your room. That’s not what you’d expect from a luxury hotel.

Our room hasn’t had used plates removed in two days, there was no shampoo or basic toiletries provided, no bathrobes, and my wife and daughter had to go out and buy shampoo themselves. These are basic amenities in any genuine 5-star hotel.

The public toilets near the bar and restaurant were often poorly maintained, with toilet paper dispensers coming apart when used. The outdoor plastic glasses are old, stained and often don’t appear properly cleaned. The outside areas could also be kept much cleaner throughout the day.

The staff, particularly at the bar, have been friendly, hardworking and helpful. This review is not aimed at them—they are doing their best. The issues lie with the hotel’s management and standards.

The buffet food is, at best, 3-star quality. There is very little variety, with lots of stews and usually only one grilled meat option such as pork or chicken. The children’s food selection is particularly disappointing. For a family resort, there should be simple favourites like fresh pizza, pasta and a better choice overall.

The drinks are also disappointing. Most of the spirits are unfamiliar brands, and many of the cocktails come from pre-mixed cartons rather than being freshly made.

The lack of a visible lifeguard around the pool is also surprising for a hotel of this size.

The biggest disappointment is that we’ll now spend at least five of our ten nights eating and drinking away from the hotel because the food simply isn’t good enough for us. That will cost our family around an extra €1,500, which completely defeats the purpose of booking an all-inclusive 5-star holiday.

It’s frustrating because we work hard all year to afford a quality family holiday, and this has been a major disappointment. We’ve spoken to several other guests over the past couple of days, and many have expressed the same opinions.

I genuinely don’t enjoy writing negative reviews, but I also believe future guests deserve an honest account of our experience. The staff deserve credit, but management needs to address these issues if they want this hotel to meet the standard of a true 5-star resort.

Just returned from a week away, first of all the views are exceptional from the rooms and adults only pool.

The restaurant gets extremely busy so we went early in an evening especially having children, they dont really cater for children on the "kids corner" section but luckily my children are at an age of wanting to explore new foods to an extent. The little things like butter and yogurts could be better as they dont offer yogurt pots or butter portions, its just blocks of rock hard butter and no yogurts in the restaurant. The limited options for deserts, we have been to less star rating hotels and they offer a much more vast options for everything. The whole of the buffet restaurant could be much bigger and more options of food to chose from.

Throughout the day around the pool area, in the afternoon the wind picks up everyday. The hotel could do with someone cleaning the area hourly to prevent cups, plates, food from been blown over all the time and napkins blowing into the pool, floors been really sticky from spilt drinks. Umbrellas/parasols could do with being anchored into the ground to prevent near accidents as I witnessed whilst there a few times. The queues for the bar during the day by the pool are crazy busy with queues going around the outdoor seating area, with most of the time just 1 serving.

Animation team are very energetic around the pool area throughout the day and evening for kids disco and some entertainment afterwards. However, if you join in or look like your enjoying it, they will hound you and pester you to leave a review on Google or TripAdvisor by getting you to scan a device they hold out to you and wont leave you alone unless you do it. This is giving not true full reviews about the hotel. Plus more than anything, it gets annoying and frustrating.

The rooms are amazing, modern and spacious with excellent aircon and views. The lift are annoying as you have yo use key card to request lift to rooms or recption/pool side but only request 1 out of 4 and usually 9 times out of 10 are full and have to do the process again or use the stairs to get down, this takes ages and timely to get down.

Many little things could be improved to make the hotel as a whole a lot better, which would get it to a much nicer standard.

Overall still enjoyed our stay, this is just our honest review throughout our time we were there and having stayed at other 5 star resorts, we expected better.