Hotel Riu Touareg - All Inclusive

This is only the second review I have ever written. We booked Riu Touareg in Boa Vista through TUI as a family holiday in August 2024. Naturally we were looking forward to it. It ended up stressful and disappointing. The negatives were that the hotel was run down and we had to move rooms twice. The bed was brown and ripped at the bottom. The air conditioning did not work. The hand towel rail was hanging off the wall and we found a cockroach in the room. There was a power cut in the room which we had to wait hours to be fixed and we had to have maintenance out to fix the air conditioning twice. Three of us were very unwell for over a week which I have no doubt was linked to poor hygiene or food at the hotel, and completely ruined the holiday! We had to cancel an excursion due to being too unwell. I am currently perusing this with an independent legal team. I am aware that several other families were unwell whilst we were out there. It was stressful having to book the nicer restaurants as they were all fully booked on our arrival. I had to get up early during the week to try and reserve places. The positives were that the staff were friendly and the island was beautiful. We went on an excursion on the second day through TUI which was lovely.

Our fourth visit to this hotel and it did not disappoint yet again. We stayed in adults only as previous years. Do not take any notice of poor reviews, the hotel is spotlessly clean the staff cannot do enough for you, a special mention to Ummumane the pool guy, he's always smiling and always ready with a hello. The food, if you can't find something to eat here then you must be incredibly picky, the food is always fresh, hot and so much of it, the staff honestly work endlessly to make sure everyone enjoys their holiday. We had just one quibble with the optics not being replaced but it certainly didn't spoil our stay....10 days of shear bliss not to mention 32 degrees see you November 2025

We went on holiday to RIU Touareg in August 2024. Despite being an apparent 5 star resort the rooms are tiny and open plan, giving no privacy to the shower or toilet. Every time the toilet is flushed it fills the whole room with the stench if fermented sewage. Cockroaches were everywhere including around the food areas and in our rooms, see the attached picture. And finally the food itself was poor, the quality of which is probably worse than a throw in the oven type of pizza etc. Every restaurant is a buffet and there was no point in booking one of the specialty restaurants as everything they serve is in the main restaurant, they merely have a smaller selection of choices. Don't bother. It may say 5 stars and you may think you are getting a good deal as it is "all inclusive" but this hotel is quite literally cheap!

I will try to cover everything I remember! Watch some reviews on Youtube (we found this very helpful too). We flew on a Tuesday rather than a weekend and saved £700! I saw about checking in via the RIU app before arriving at the hotel. Great, this gave us a shorter queue and check in time was pretty quick. It would have been nice to have some welcome drinks available though. The hotel is huge and our block (9) seemed to be the furthest away so quite a trek, not too bad for us but anyone with mobility issues or older couples may have found this too much each day, so do mention any walking/mobility issues when you book. We normally book a suite but didn't this time and chose to do a last minute cheap and cheerful so I did not have high expectations for the price we paid. I was not disappointed, I felt like I was in the Caribbean at 2 thirds of the cost and flight time from UK! The room was spacious, bit of a smell from the toilet (I had previously read this may be an issue) so closed the lid and the door, problem solved! There were no towel robes which I thought was quite standard these days but maybe if you're in an upgraded room?? The sofa in the room was tired looking and frayed but I did not feel the need to make an issue of this. The fridge contained water only which was a little disappointing, some other soft drinks would have been nice, even more so because later in the week we found ourselves buying bottled coke/fanta from the shop (not cheap) to save carrying glasses from the bar back to our rooms. In hindsight, we should have just kept refilling our empty bottles but kept forgetting to take them out with us! Do not be fooled by the breeze, can't believe how many people I saw with very burnt skin! The shop sells sun bed pegs to hold your towel down, 8 euros for one peg. Buy a pack of 8 from amazon for £5 before you leave, they were handy to have. Never struggled to find 2 sunbeds together, probably more difficult if you're a group looking to sit together all the time, or in busier times like school holidays. We plotted up most days by the pool bar and my hubby was in and out of the shaded seating area that was close by. There were lots of seating areas within the pool too which was something I hadn't seen before and so it was really sociable but also easy for people to get sunburn because they weren't feeling the heat. The pool bar could get busy but I didn't feel waiting times were unacceptable. We knew not to expect premium alcohol so purchased Jack Daniels at duty free and just took some out in a small coke bottle each day/evening so we could drink that if we wanted it. The snack bar/restaurant near the pool, we tried a couple of times but found the food here much colder than the main restaurant probably because of the open sides and strong breezes. The beach was immense and stunning. The first section is scattered with broken shells and sometimes the odd pile of donkey poo! Once you get to the section where the palm trees and sun