"We recently traveled to Valamar Tamaris as a family, staying in a premium three-section suite on an All-Inclusive package. While we want to acknowledge upfront that hotel management acted professionally at checkout by offering a 20% reduction on our accommodation bill due to severe room maintenance defects, the systemic operational and capacity issues across this resort mean we cannot recommend it for families.
Here is an objective breakdown of what prospective guests should know before booking.
1. Severe Sunbed Shortages & Misleading "4 Pools" Advertising
The resort advertises four swimming pools, but the reality for general resort guests is very different:
One "pool" is a tiny children's slide area with approximately 4 sunbeds.
Another is located at the villas (a 2–5 minute walk away).
This leaves only two central pools (one main family pool and one quiet pool) to serve a resort capacity of up to 1,400 guests.
With only ~600 total sunbeds across the entire complex (~150–200 at the main family pool and ~200+ at the quiet pool), more than half of the guests are structurally excluded from seating every day.
The Towel Loophole: Staff claim a "no towel reserving" policy (removing towels left alone after two hours), but if guests leave any personal item (a hat, bag, or flip-flops) with their towels, staff completely ignore block-booking. Chairs are saved from early morning for the entire day.
Hostile Atmosphere for Children: Because families are forced into the "quiet pool" just to find beds, lifeguards constantly reprimand parents and young children (ages 3–6) for normal, happy play and laughing when entering the water.
Unsafe & Costly Overflow Alternatives: When pool beds are full, staff direct families either to peripheral forest beds (where signs explicitly state "no lifeguards on duty / swim at your own risk," making child supervision impossible) or to the beach. However, beach sunbeds cost an extra €50+ per day per family and beach dining is excluded from the All-Inclusive package, requiring a steep uphill walk back to the resort just to access included meals. Adding insult to injury, we observed an open storage room containing dozens, if not hundreds, of unused sunbed cushions while guests were left on bare loungers.
2. All-Inclusive Package Dilution & Hidden Costs
The All-Inclusive offering feels cut to the bare minimum, forcing frequent out-of-pocket spending:
Substandard Beverages: Included soft drinks (cola, tonic) are cheap, unpalatable substitutes—to the point where children were diluting cola with water to drink it, and tonic tasted like sweetened lemonade. Getting a standard, recognizable branded beverage (like Pepsi) requires paying a €2.00–€2.50 surcharge per drink.
Empty Room Refrigerators: The suite refrigerator is provided completely empty—not even complimentary still bottled water is stocked for overnight family use.
No Daytime Snacks: Outside of main meals, snack availability for children is restricted to a rigid two-hour afternoon window (3:00 PM – 5:00 PM) at a single snack bar. There is zero access to simple snacks (crisps, fruit, etc.) at any other point in the day or evening.
3. Dining & Resort Operations
Buffet Bottlenecks: The All-Inclusive dinner buffet combines vegetables, meat, fish, and sides into a single continuous serving station rather than separating food categories. This forces all guests into one massive, slow-moving bottleneck line even if you only want a single side dish for a child.
Locked Playroom Access: A direct gate connecting the main restaurant area to the children's playroom is kept locked by staff. Families and children are forced to either scale fences/gates (an obvious physical hazard) or walk a nearly 1-kilometer circular detour around the hotel grounds to reach it.
Under-Sized & Unmaintained Public Facilities: For a resort hosting up to 1,400 guests, the main reception gentlemen's restroom contains only two cubicles and three urinals. Additionally, the lights in the public restrooms beside the Taverna bar were completely non-functional, leaving no usable toilet beside the pool or snack bar during the day and forcing children to walk all the way back to the main hotel reception soaking wet just to use a restroom.
4. Suite Maintenance & Habitability
Our premium suite suffered from widespread, deferred maintenance that required us to seek intervention from management:
Broken AC Controls: Two of the three air conditioning wall thermostats had their control switches snapped off, leaving us unable to turn units on/off, adjust fan speeds, or control temperatures across separate sleeping areas.
Dead Room Phones: Both in-room/emergency telephones were completely dead upon arrival, forcing us to physically walk to reception to report defects.
Leaking Shower & Worn Seals: Degrading seals in the main bathroom caused the shower to flood the floor daily, creating a persistent slip hazard.
Broken Appliances & Noise: The bathroom hair dryer shorted out within one minute of use. Furthermore, the bathroom ventilation fan was broken, emitting a loud, mechanical rattling noise continuously through the night.
Missing Curtains: The master bedroom was missing a curtain panel, leaving us unable to block out morning light at sunrise.
General Wear & Tear: Widespread scrapes on walls and structural holes in wall corners reflected poor property upkeep.
Final Verdict
While management's 20% refund on our accommodation bill at checkout was a fair and appreciated acknowledgment of the physical defects in our suite, a discount cannot fix a resort that is structurally over capacity. Between the sunbed shortages, unpalatable drink substitutes, restrictive snack hours, and poor facility maintenance, Valamar Tamaris falls well short of what families expect from a modern All-Inclusive resort."
