Hotel Riu Madeira 4*

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!

The hotel is magnificent, the location is great, and the staff is awesome. The all-inclusive is a true 24/7 all-inclusive; you can help yourself. Everything was truly perfect. We had a very beautiful vacation and Madeira is an incredibly beautiful island. For me, the only point where I can say something is the pool closing time; 6:00 PM is early.