"Location:
The Location is great. It is right next to the RIU hotel at the end of the street. A 10 minute walk over to the Europa centre where you can get bars, restaurants and shops. Or get a taxi for around €7 to the Puerto Rico Commercial Centre which is probably better for late night life. Also about €5 in a taxi to Amadores beach which is stunning. I did see in some reviews mentioning a shuttle bus that runs to and from the beach, but this seems to be no longer a thing.
Atmosphere:
Really friendly atmosphere between all the staff and all the guests. The restaurant is kind of the main area in the hotel. The pool bar and night bar is the same thing, and is at the side. There is an outside terrace where you can sit during the day and at night. You can also eat your meals here too. We preferred to eat outside as there was a nice breeze with the good views and parasols available during the day. A lot of guests we met seemed to be going for years as they like this hotel so much. However this was our first visit.
Animation team are great also, special mention to Liam and Paula who were fantastic. You can do day time activities like Aquagym, Football, Bingo and there is usually entertainment brought in for night time. We enjoyed all the night time shows. Not as boring as most hotels can be!
Cleanliness:
The hotel was spotless, the cleaning staff do a brilliant job. However my only complaint would be the fact we were told Towels would only be changed every second day, and no cleaning on a Sunday or Tuesday. The towel change thing was a bit of a disappointment as we like to shower twice a day when on holiday. Once in the morning and once before you get changed to go out at night. The hotels say this is to be eco-friendly, however it is a bit too much to have this forced upon guests. We should have the option to keep or re-use towels like most hotels. This is the ONLY thing that I would warn someone about if they were thinking of going, as this is a bit shocking.
Food / All Inclusive:
Food was great. We did All inclusive and there was no complaints. We can be quite picky about quality of food, but this hotel was fantastic in terms of selection and quality. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner were great. Great value for the money with All inclusive. Most guests agreed.
Lifts / Stairs:
There is LOTS and LOTS of stairs in this hotel. It is the way the apartments are built on a hill. There is 2 lifts which I would more describe as "cable cars" which were funny but a nuisance! They seem to skip floors, like you press to go down and you see the lift going straight past you down without stopping. Most times we ended up taking the stairs to avoid waiting ages for the lift to eventually stop for us. You could also be in the lift and it would go by your floor and you would be going up and down like mad while other people were picked up. This is probably the only thing that annoyed me during my visit, but we also laughed about it. The hotel would not be really suitable for someone in a wheelchair or with severe mobility issues because of this.
Overall: Would we go back? Yes.
We have been to Ocean Hills next door and RIU next door at the other side, and the Altamar has been the best one."
