Gale Vacations from $1,283

Close to alvor, nice pool , large grounds.

Queues for everything here. Checking took nearly an hour, queues for sun beds, for food (I’ll get to the food), for drinks (you can get only 2 drinks per person, so a family of 4 need 2 members to go to the bar). Always running out of drinks around the pool. The food was terrible. I stayed for 6 days and ate in the hotel only 4 times. The worst cuts of “meat” used which resulted in mainly bones. Oh and the “kebab hut” took 30 mins to queue up for and 1 per person. So again, if the family want to eat from a snack bar they all need to queue for half an hour together. Really not what you expect from a hotel billing themselves as 4 star. Staff didn’t want to help with anything. Bars closed at 11, but last orders at 10.30 and lights turned off and kicked out at 11. You can then head to the piano bar, but must pay for the same drinks that you were just consuming in the beach bar. Additionally a security guy (PSG logo on T-shirt) would come around the pool each day at 4pm and aggressively “police” what was happening: people messing about in the pool, throwing a ball in the pool (yes! A ball!), sitting on the side of the pool drinking. All things that people were allowed to do for the 7 hours that not a single staff member was there, but at 4pm suddenly there were rules. The staff were predominantly not Portuguese and there was a huge language barrier. Don’t stay here

Everything as expected. Superb. Sea view. Max the main man looked after us at all times. The service was exceptional.

They are closing end of year as property is being redeveloped by luxury hotel chain.