Rio Quente Resorts - Hotel Turismo — Hotel in Região Geográfica Imediata de Caldas Novas-Morrinhos

My wife's family has been coming to Pousada do Rio Quente for more than 50 years, and it is still a great place to get together for a few days to relax in the thermal springs. I have previously stayed in the Hotel Pousada, and the Tourismo Hotel is new since my last visit (quite a few years ago). We decided to stay in the Tourismo on advice from my brother-in-law who has stayed in all three of the resort hotels in recent years, and considers the Tourisimo to have the friendliest and most helpful staff, and he thinks it also has the best food. I have to agree on both accounts. I found the Tourismo staff to be exceptionally warm and friendly, and I thought the food was excellent. The Tourismo is very family oriented and there was an excellent day-care facility for when it was time for adults to get some time to themselves. I spoke with the Manager who was gracious and friendly, and he assured me that while not many on the staff are fluent in English he was certain they could handle all the needs of guests who aren't fluent in Portuguese. (There are not huge numbers of foreign guests at the resort, but the service staff told me that they serve many more Japanese, Chinese and Russian guests in recent years.)||||The room was not large -- more like a European room than an American room -- and the bathroom was a tight fit, although the shower (no tub) could easily fit two people. We tried to get a quieter room overlooking the fishing lake, but instead ended up overlooked the front drive, which was a bit noisy when transfer buses were there early in the morning. (However, the buses weren't as loud as the macaws making mad parrot love on the roof over our room at sunup! :-) ||||We really enjoyed our interactions at breakfast and lunch with the dining room staff. We only stayed a couple of nights (4 meals), but quickly developed friendly rapport with 5-6 of the staff. The manager dropped by to say hello at every meal and the chef came out a couple of times to talk about various items we inquired about. They were really a great crew. ||||The best part about staying in one of the resort hotels was the early and easy access to the Hot Park as well as access to the expanse thermal pools that are the heart of the resort. I stayed at a hotel outside the park once when we were late in making our booking, and it was a real hassle dealing with crowds and having to leave the pools and restaurants early. Lounging in the pools late to watch the stars come out is great, but I've decided that my favorite way to enjoy the pools is to eat breakfast early (7 AM) and head to the pools immediately after. Most folks head to the Hot Park rides first thing in the morning, so the thermal pools are peaceful and quiet (like they were years ago) for at least a few hours in the morning.||||A little bit about the price and fees warrant some mention since it's clear that some reviews and patrons have had issues. My wife booked our room from the states, but when she encountered a lot of confusing and conflicting information on travel booking sites, she opted to go through the hotel website and deal with staff in Portuguese (native language). This allowed us to make sure that we booked a room with the largest beds available in the Tourismo (king-size were only available at Cristal) and that we had a meal plan for both breakfast and lunch at the Tourismo. The are several different meal options plus the swipe cards allow you to easily charge for food and drink and kiosks around the resort where prices aren't always perfectly clear unless you ask. We saw and heard lots of complaints about food charge issues, particularly from large family groups where children were given swipe cards, which they used frequently and often without supervision. (I'm not sure whether the hotel can put daily limits on individual cards, but this would be the bast way to keep the kids expenditures under control.)||||Related to checkout, we were warned in advance that the mass exodus that occurs at the 10 AM checkout time can be complete chaos, so if possible, take advantage of pre-checkout the night before. Be prepared; it requires you bring all swipe cards (to check for charges) and that you have turned in your pool towels and gotten your towel cards back. It was a bit frustrating that even going to this trouble the night before we still had to stand in line and go through a partial rehash in the morning, but it was till faster than it was for folks who didn't do pre-check. Our total takeaway price (2 adults) was ca. $415 per night for a room that could have accommodated a family of 4 (tightly, 2 adults, 2 small children) and two self-serve buffet meals in the hotel each day. The end on June is the start of winter high season (school is out in July), so cheaper prices may be available in other seasons, but I wouldn't expect a great difference in the...

This place was awesome, first we were greeted and farewelled by Mackendy at the front who was super friendly and helpful. This was my first time at the park but my partner and her family have been many times. All the staff are super friendly and helpful and are always willing to have a good conversation.||||The atmosphere in the park is great with nature all around with local animals everywhere, you will spot some arara’s, tucanos, lizards, monkeys, tuiú (giant lizard), other small birds and some fish. There are other animals around but I don’t thing they venture this way.||At 5:30pm the arara’s show up in the masses and if you are fast to can get some great photos or videos with them flying with the sunset in the background.||||So first things first we were staying in the Turismo Hotel, as they have three hotels on site, but in my opinion Tursimo is the best one because of location and facilities. (Trust me location is worth it when it comes to all the activities below)||||The natural hot water park (only for guests of the hotels) is great and calming with may different temperature pools with varying depths. It also boasts a natural sauna, lots of bars, a day spa and gym. The bars sell food as well but there are some restaurants just up the path. ||The morning is more peaceful as the afternoon has live music and more people as the other park closes at 5pm and around 8/830pm it’s gets peaceful again as many head to eat and hit the bed. ||||They also have an entertainment arena where they put on shoes in the evening at 9:30 that ranges from dancing to rock bands. Now speaking of Rock Bands we saw a band called Utriu (search them up on Instagram) these guys where amazing and played some awesome classics from queen to AC/DC and more. The crazy thing is they sounded pretty damn close the the original singers as the changed the music. ||||The hot water park (with the slides and activities) opens around 9am but most of the slides and stuff start from 10am, though they have the large pool (with some exercises or dance going on) and fake beach open. Is has a great range of slides for kids to adults plus other activities for kids to keep busy. At the fake beach you can play beach tennis, beach volleyball, beach footvolley (beach football volleyball), beach football and table football game (like table tennis but using a football), oh and dancing in the pool. ||||Lots of places to get food and drinks from but don’t forget you have an all you can eat buffet back at the hotel if you are staying there.||||Now to the food, the breakfast and lunch is an all you can eat buffet with a pretty good range. The lunch has the Brazilian classics everyday with a few dishes changing every day. You also get a range of beers, soft drinks and juices included (yes all you can drink beer ;)).||||Now the the next shoutout was to Ericlecia whom served us fresh pasta everyday, the pasta does change as well with the sauces everyday, and everyday it was delicious só do your self a favor and go see her at lunch, you’ll be greeted by super happy and friendly face and then a happy stomach. ||||There was a few other activities at the resort we didn’t do but I’ll mention them in case it’s something you will get up to with the family or friends such as tennis courts, soccer court, fishing, quad biking, rafting, zip line and some diving/ snorkeling.||||The last major shout out is to Igor, who is the main man that’s runs the operations side of the park, he showed us around the park with possible locations for a wedding and some great ideas and locations. Definitely look forward to working with him next year for the big day.||||There are definitely a lot more of the staff that deserve a shout out but I’m bad with names especially when I meet too many in a short time frame, so thank you to the rest of the staff that made the...

We stayed in "Hotel Pousada" by “Rio Quente Resorts” for one night in June 2017.||My general conclusion based on this short stay: very good pools and park, but service and food are very low quality for such an expensive hotel.||To be more specific: ||- staff could not speak any English (in such an expensive hotel, I think this is unacceptable - my girlfriend does not speak Portuguese so direct communication with staff was impossible).||- Food was too simple for such an expensive hotel. For example, we went to Bar Brahma. They had good wines, but to go with those good wines they only had very simple snacks (the ones you normally find in very inexpensive places in Brazil - we had fried manioc and dried meat and they were definitely not good).||- Checkout took more than half an hour. Big line and staff wasn’t very helpful. When we actually got to the attendant who would process the checkout, he could not answer any of our questions alone (not even in Portuguese - I am a native speaker). For every question, he would ask for a moment, leave the counter and look for someone better informed. ||- On our last day, we wanted to go to Hot Park (the big - and very good - thermal waters park that belongs to the same company/group and where we were supposed to enter for free as guests - but not on the last day..). We were told that we would have to leave the hotel premises and the park/hotels complex with our rental car and pay for parking outside (+ pay for park entrance, although the latter with a discount). Again, not the treatment you would expect from such an expensive hotel. It wouldn't be so difficult to come up with a system that would at least allow guests to leave their cars in the hotel parking lot inside the complex on their last day... ||- Price: High price and bad service. I have stayed in many 5-star hotels in Switzerland, in the Caribbean and in other places in Latin America that were the same price or cheaper and had much better service. ||- Pools and Hot Park: Good, very good. The only things I really recommend in this hotel.||- To summarize, I do not plan to go back. ||Be smart:||- if you want to go to Hot Park, just stay in a cheaper hotel around it and pay for your Hot Park ticket. ||- if you wanna splurge and enjoy a fantastic hotel with high-quality services, don't even think about...