Riu Chiclana

Stayed here for just two nights while in the area and despite being a last minute choice without a great deal of research, it turned out well. We booked direct on the website and the price was good AI. Food was good, staff friendly, loved the self service drinks, soft play and kids pool all great. We had a ground floor room and we had some ants but no huge deal. I thought the evening entertainment was quite poor but it’s hard to please the masses. Overall I would stay again.

We’ve just returned from a weeks holiday at RIU Chiclana with my wife and 2 year old son. This was our first visit to the hotel and we managed to check-in fairly quickly upon arrival. We did have to wait about 30 minutes for our room to be ready. As we had such an early flight with TUI it wasn’t quite ready but that was fine as they had given us our wristbands so we could enjoy a drink whilst we waited. Our Room - we stayed in room 2621 which was on the first floor. We found this location to be perfect. We were right next to the kids pool/play area and the main pool and just down from the main restaurants so everything was within easy reach. We also had the sun for most of the day as well and the evening. Food/restaurants - for us we found the food a bit repetitive. The speciality restaurants were only open when the day/weekend visitors were in resort otherwise it was the main buffet or Noray. We found the buffet for dinner to be too similar every night and both my wife/son struggled on occasion to find something different to eat. We didn’t have this issue when we ate in the Italian or the grill. The speciality restaurants were open Thursday/Friday & Saturday when we were in resort. For this reason I’ve only given a 4 out of 5 rating as we do like to dine in different restaurants. Pool/Children’s facilities/ evening entertainment - overall the pools and children’s play areas were amazing. My son loved every minute of the soft play area and the pools. The swimming pools were cold but you got use to them and were find by the afternoon. Fran & Ana were very friendly at the soft play. My boy loves going to see them and playing. Evening entertainment was very good, typical RIU style. Mini disco was always very popular and the main shows were to a high standard. They clearly work hard to achieve this. Other comments - the only other things we had an issue with was trying to get hold of an iron in resort. We didn’t manage to get one. They only have 1 or 2 and if a guest keeps it for the entire stay you cannot get one so don’t bank on one if you need it. Also the hotel does get very busy with weekend guests. They do seem to get a different level of service and we kind of felt any questions/queries we had just didn’t seem to matter. Overall we had a good holiday just a few things that let us down with food, iron and service on occasions.

So this riu hotel was a good hotel 50 mins by coach from Jerez airport, luckily I was off of the coach early and checked in to avoid queues. Hotel has been refurbished to a high standard everything is great kept clean and no fault with that at all everything’s set out fine and staff maintain it to a high standard. The room we were allocated first had one sliding door at ground level that came out into a main path where your balcony was (not ideal) so my wife went back to reception and was seen quickly and kindly offered another room which was great. There are self serve soft drinks machines dotted around as well as self serve beer machine machines perfect!!! The buffet restaurant was great serving all parts of food for most tastes only thing Letting it down was the dessert section. Now the al a carte restaurants I wouldn’t waste your time it’s not al a carte at all its a self serve buffet so not what I would expect so we didn’t go again and actually left and went into the original buffet restaurant. Bars are great but a little disappointed by the cocktails being already pre made in containers not like other all inclusives I have been too! But other than that the beer was good and vodka and coke ect was made with local spirits. There was a mixed bunch of nationality’s at the hotel which is great but the Spanish at weekends do create a lot of noise into early hours which isn’t great if you have children sleeping as This can echo around the apartment blocks. Now to the beach there seemed to only be stepped access down to the beach which if your a couple is fine but a family elderly or disabled becomes difficult as it is quite a way down and back up so not sure why that is.