Iberostar Selection Praia do Forte — Hotel in Região Geográfica Imediata de Salvador

I am 40 years old and travelled to Iberostar with my husband, 2 kids (6g and 4b) and extended family in a group of 10 people, most of us Brazilians and few British. We stayed over Christmas and our stay was rated by EVERYONE in our group as the best holiday of our lives. Starting with the outstanding service provided by every member of staff we came in contact with: super keen to help and friendly, felt like they guessed what we wanted before we knew we wanted it. It looked like there were more staff than guests, which goes someway to explain the premium service feel. Thank you SO MUCH everyone at Iberostar for making our holiday so amazing, it's all down to you!

The entertainment team was brilliant, we couldn't keep with all the fun activities they put on. On a daily basis, I did: a step class, acqua gym class, poolside bingo, the lunchtime pool team game and enjoyed the afternoon pool side musical act: twice we had a DJ+sax player going through the best international and Brazilian dance and pop hits, we had a band called Better Together and another Rock band which the name escapes me. Both bands focused on well known international and Brazilian songs so we could all enjoy and sing along. On Christmas day there was foam party on the sand for adults and children, so much fun!

The catering and bar teams provided a never ending feast at 5 different restaurants, we only manage to visit 4: Pelo, Oriental, Baiano and Mexican. Each had an impressive buffet, heavy on fresh seafood, vegetables and fruit but also generous on meat options. I couldn't think of anything that was missing from the buffets, at first it was overwhelming to see so much delicious food in one place! Mains were ordered from the menu, except for Pelo, which is buffet only. We had Christmas dinner at the hotel, again an insanely bountiful buffet even more luxurious than the previous ones but with a turkey station that gave away that it was Christmas. We had live music by Jorginaldo - a local musician singing, playing the guitar and pulling at our heart strings.

The All Inclusive drinks were awesome - loads of caipirinha (cachaca based) and caipiroska (Absolut vodka based) fruity cocktails, Prosecco, Johnny Walker double black whisky, Heinekens, Budweisers, coconut water and all the traditional soft drinks. The rooms felt palatial, the beds were much more comfortable than our beds at home and always clean.

Here's a list of the food/drinks that were the best at least one of us had ever had:

Bloody Mary: they put loads of lime which made it spectacular Quindim: we have a sweet obsessed grandad in our group and he said this was sublime Molho Picante: the two adult Brits in our group are addicted to spicy food and said that this sauce was not only super spicy but mega fragrant Bobo de Camarao: tasty, coconuty, generous servings of seafood. We all had seconds and decided to learn how to make it so we can have it more often, it's just heaven Acaraje: a tasty classic, perfectly executed! Fruit vodka cocktails: they were all stunning, it was so difficult to choose

To make the experience even more premium, here are a few suggestions: on the last day there was a vegan station at the main restaurant (Pelo), can you please have it daily? Also, there seems to be a lot of unhealthy options (cakes, deep fried). The pool bar closed at 6pm but it wouldn't give us notice. Can we have a "last orders" call out 20 min beforehand? Another idea is to personalise when replacing mini bar drinks based on consumption. We only drunk the Kuat and coke zero and these got replaced daily however we would have liked to have more than one Kuat per day. Finally, the app seems generic, not tailored to our stay - there was a list of activities and restaurants but no indication of activity timings or ability to book restaurants...

Nice Hotel in a huge complex, directly located at the beach. The beach was stunning, not many people there, though you couldn't really swim in the sea since the waves were pretty strong (December). Unfortunately there were some oil spills on the beach. We then often had to scrub them of our body - very annoying. We also talked to the management about the issue. What if little children stick this oil in their mouths? - this could be very dangerous. We urged them to at least warn their guests about the issue before letting them onto the beach. More cleaning staff at the beach would be of course a much better option in order to tackle this problem.

The food was delicious most of the time - lot of options to choose from. I really liked the amount of local food which was offered. I can highly recommend to check out the themed restaurants, we especially enjoyed dining at the Terriyaki Restaurant and at the one with Steaks. Be sure to book early. We disliked the Gourmet Restaurant not because of the food itself but rather because of the strict dress code. You could say that in this evening we dressed really well but one male family member didn't wear closed shoes, so he had to change to trainers (the only type of closed shoes that he had with him). Experiencing this strict dress code we also expected the service to be on point. But we got dissapointed. The Restaurant is "French cuisine", in this regard we therefore expected the service living up to european standards (since we ourselves live in europe), which they were not (some silverware was placed wrong, some staff were not very attentive etc.). The food on the other hand was great.

In general the Hotel is very well looked after - there is always staff running around and caring about the garden and so on. Another bummer was the fact that only very few employees could speak English or German. Since we also read some reviews beforehand we already expected that to some degree. So if you are not speaking Portugese or Spanish make sure to learn some phrases or words in these respective languages before visiting.

Rooms were clean and spacious. Though some extra toiletry products like toothbrushes would have been great (our baggage was delayed so we had to buy some for the first few days).

The pool area was big and there were always some sunbeds availiable. Some areas are really noisey so if you want some peace look for the quiet pool area. Great volleyball courts as well. The staff there was also very nice and motivating.

The gym was too small considering the amount of people who visited it, the temperature was crazy low - we were freezing there. Can't recommend.

Generally speaking you had a lot of drinking options to choose from, besides some really expensive drinks (whiskey, champagne), they all were all inclusive.

From the hotel you could do a trip to the next city Praia do Forte. The turtle station "Projeto Tamar" was really cool, highly recommend it. The city itself is really cute, good shopping options and local food.

All in all, we had a really good time at this hotel...

I hereby express my dissatisfaction regarding an inadequate charge, identified on my invoice referring to my last stay at the Iberostar Praia do Forte hotel, from 07/01/24 to 07/07/24. ||||I made a reservation in the above period for 2 adults and 2 children, however, upon arriving at the hotel reception I was informed by the supervisor Audrey (very unprepared and impolite for the position by the way) that there were no children listed in my initial reservation acquired by a partner reseller. I presented the check-in voucher with children included I received from TRIP.COM and the front desk supervisor Audrey just ignored It and told me to contact them and I would have to solve the problem, even that the legal responsibility for the eligibility of partner resellers lies entirely with Iberostar. ||||Me and my family was ignored next to the check-in counter. I asked to speak to the reception manager, Mr Matheus, who did not want to see me. ||||In order to not to ruin the family vacation even more, after all, we had just arrived from a red eye flight and minimize my family frustration because we couldn't check in, I was compelled to accept the unreasonable solution proposed by supervisor Audrey and manager Matheus, in charging me an “extra deposit” so that it would be possible to check us in and after verification with the partner reseller (ignoring again the voucher presented) the amount would be refunded before our checkout. ||||When checking out, for my surprise, they informed me that the amount had been wrongly processed as an expense and it would not be possible to refund It. When checking my bank statement, I found that the amount of R$ 5,819 for the extra deposit had actually been debited, totaling a double payment since the children were included in the initial pre paid reservation processed on 06/22/24.||||I am certain that this is an administrative error and I urgently request a refund of the double amount charged.||||I look forward to a coherent solution for this issue and thank you in advance for your attention.||||I emphasize that this is my sixth visit to the Iberostar Selection Praia do Forte, in addition to having already visited other complexes such as the Iberostar Grand Bávaro in Punta Cana and Cancun. For this reason I was even offered and I kindly declined to be part of The Iberostar Club. ||||It is a shame that this last visit ( with different front desk management team ) ruined the good impression of the hotel I use to have ( see my last review from...