Hotel Riu Touareg — Hotel in Boa Vista

Thought I knew what to expect from the reviews but it is far worse. Grim, tired, broken, 3 star at best... But before I go to the negative let me share a positive - the staff. They work incredibly hard for very long hours and don't earn very much at all (€10pd) they try to make your holiday enjoyable and work hard to keep the place clean. They are doing the best they can with the resources the hotel chain provide them. ||So on to in my opinion are the negatives... Understanding Touareg is a massive complex the size of a small town and it's very, very busy help you understand that it isn't going to be as advertised and the TUI images are from its heyday or newly built, don't be fooled! Touareg is very tired with lots of visible areas of concern such as tiles missing from pools, jagged edges in the pools so adults and kids are cutting themselves, knackered furniture in dining areas, black stains on pool floors, green water at times in pools, stained bedding and table linens which are supposed to be clean, sewage stench from God knows where in rooms to name just a few. Some rooms have had a refurb but not all and if they haven't the furniture is knackered, battered and broken. Rooms are clean though. Communal areas are clean too. But.. ||BED BUGs are REAL here! We had a squashed one on our clean sheet upon arrival. I had read the reviews and took control by taking bed bug spray, stripped the bed down, sprayed it and bedding and sprayed the room immediately on arrival. That's when I saw the heat pressed one on the sheet. We didn't have a problem with bugs probably due to spraying but next room did, they were bit badly, caught a bug and took it to the reps... So yes there are bugs and those saying they've never seen one, great for you and lucky your room didn't but it doesn't mean they aren't there. It's not the staff fault, they are trying to deal with it. Travellers bring them in and they get in rooms with people. Moving from room to room. ||The pools well... The main pools/ is really one big Pool which is sectioned off to make smaller pools with a swim up bar in the middle. These pools are disgustingly grim. Sometimes the water is murky maybe from sun lotion or maybe from the adults who never leave it from morning til evening. Sadly, urinating in the pool is common place even though toilets are mere metres away! The infinity pool looks lovely but is the busiest pool and gets overcrowded with adults, kids and lilos. ||Sun bed wars DO take place and by 7am most poolside places have been claimed and by 9 most places with shade have also been claimed. Beds are very close together so much so I heard my neighbours fart! Now let me tell you this, in the 7 days we were here the pool and infinity pool had to be shut suddenly due to people defecting and vomiting in these. If you've got a dodgy tum, don't go in the poil, if you need the loo get out the pool and use the loo, fgs! Selfish people spoiling other people holiday which they too have paid a small fortune for. ||Now this lead s me on to I'm not surprised people had dodgy tums, the fly and food hygiene are a lot to be desired. Flys in every food they put out. The hotel caters for the masses and hit food is constantly churned out, left to cool and more hit food places on top even if the previous batch has not been taken by diners. Cold burgers which we were told to microwave! The food is hit and miss in quality and temperature but you will always find something to eat. It is manic at mealtimes just with the number of guests. ||You can book speciality restaurants but it's difficult to get a slot. Try 3am and you might be lucky and get the 9pm sitting (11pm UK time so. Might also explain dodgy belly as the digestive system is messed up). We managed to book them but to be honest theu serve pretty much the same as main restaurant. The food is repetitive after a couple of days. ||Typical of AI, drinks are watered down, cocktails are mostly premaid mocktails so you need to ask for more alcohol||Entertainment, well they try their best. Didn't try the neon/white party to Karamboa but it appears popular. ||The sea is dangerous and red flag for a reason. Don't be stupid and go in as your insurance won't cover you should you have an accident and that's highly likely and you will need to airlifted to another country for medical help as the island doesn't have a hospital or anything like one. One bloke got took to Tenerife! Of course you will get the ones who know better than the lifeguards and just ignore their whistles and instructions to get out.. It's funny watching them consequently get battered by the waves, lose their swimwear and complain they hurt! ||If you can get out of the hotel then please book trips through Andrew Worthington, his business supports the Cape Verde and and every penny goes back to the community. ||Beach BBQ, Pub Crawl and sunset meal are great and worth it and the beach BBQ venue is somewhere you can actually swim safely as it is mostly green flag or occasionally yellow flag. ||You can gift staff tips, medical supplies etc but must write a note giving you name and room number with a list of what you are gifting otherwise it will be taken from them and they get searched. ||Paid a lot of money for this holiday and the hotel was not up to the standard we believe we paid for. It has confirmed that these complexes are not for us as they are too big, profits come first and guest satisfaction last. ||Mozzies are bad at the moment too. ||Wouldn't go back to Touareg. ||Do believe it is having a refurb in May...

We visited this hotel 7 years ago and it is now starting to show signs of wear and tear. The main pool had areas of damaged and stained tiles, which didn’t make it inviting. The infinity pool had showers surrounding it which didn’t work, this meant that people either dipped their feet and shoes in the pool after returning from the beach or just jumped in sandy. The floor of the pool and steps were then covered in sand. Our family had 3 bedrooms and there were maintenance issues in all 3. The toilets seemed to constantly flush and run water, disturbing our daughter’s sleep and although repaired when reported it happened several times. The shower curtains were hanging off. One bedroom had a shower tray, which was incredibly slippy whilst the other 2 had obviously had an upgrade and had non slip flooring. The bathroom was open plan to the bedroom with the toilet having a door. This made privacy difficult when sharing as a family. The towels barely covered your modesty so our son would tell us when he was getting out of the shower and my husband and I would go on the balcony or sit on the bed with our backs to him while he got dried and dressed. A simple curtain to pull over the bathroom entrance would have added privacy options for families sharing. Some drawers wouldn’t open and the furniture was a little tired. However, the rooms were immaculately clean, we couldn’t fault the cleaning team and the beds were very comfortable, the only issue we had was the pull out sofa bed and an external metal mechanism that scratched my sons leg causing it to bleed. It states that sunbeds cannot be reserved however, everyone does! My husband was leaving the room at 7am every morning to put towels on the beds and often returned without managing to get them altogether for our family or without any shade. It was ridiculous and spoilt our holiday setting an alarm so early, additionally we did see that people did have official saved sun beds if there were mobility issues, seeing this we went to reception and asked if we could as my wife has a disability and needs the shade, only to be told they stopped this the day previous Perhaps a way to avoid it is allocating sunbeds in a certain place for your duration. Although I know it doesn’t allow flexibility it guarantees sunbeds together and if anyone wants to move locations they can get surplus beds around the pools. There was plenty of sunbeds and we often saw rows covered in towels and used for about an hour a day, so it would stop the greed of reserving more than required etc. The hotel grounds are immaculate and stunning. The gardens are well established and provide stunning scenery. The gardeners worked tirelessly everywhere in maintaining them. We went to all of the restaurants. The Italian and Asian themed were a definite favourite and the food was varied and tasty. The Boa Vista lacked choice as there was only 3 main meals to choose from and not really child friendly food. The main Buffett was enormous and for us personally, too big and noisy however, the seating outside the main Buffett area was lovely and relaxing. We visited the smaller Buffett for breakfast and lunch, which is covered but doesn’t have doors so open to the outside humidity. Towards the end of our holiday the flies and mosquitoes were becoming unbearable and we felt like we were being eaten alive. A waiter told us this was due to it being their rainy season. It didn’t make dining there comfortable and they could definitely do with upgrading the way the food is displayed as although they had clearly tried to cover food the flies were all around it. The food would benefit from being in an enclosed area with just the seating areas outside. I have reduced mobility and had forgotten how large the resort is. I use a crutch and did find some areas of flooring to be very slippy. I ended up hiring a wheelchair as otherwise I would have limited my family to where we could access. The company used were provided by the hotel reception and had electric wheelchairs and scooters available too and we couldn’t fault...

Spent 10 nights here, all inclusive, which is not normally something we do as we like to get out and about and explore the local area, which is not really possible here as there is nothing around the hotel but scrub land.

First impressions were good, with friendly staff welcoming us to the hotel and check-in was swift, given our wrist bands and room key (yes they still use old fashioned keys rather than the more common key cards).

The resort is large and at first can seem very confusing as everywhere looks the same, what little signage they have is small and not very clear but we eventually located our room in block 6. This is where our good first impressions soured a little. The room we were allocated was very dated, very dark furniture (very battered and tatty), the clothes airer on the balcony was not even screwed to the wall so was useless (we had packed a washing line as have been caught out with this before in other resorts) and the bathroom had a sulphur smell the entire time. The beds were comfy (could do with better pillows though as the ones provided are very thin), the shower was powerful with a constant supply of warm water and the room was cleaned every day with fresh bottled water supplied, so not all that bad.

The hotel is advertised as having 6 pools but in reality there are 4. One of the pools is for the adults only section, one is the Riuland kids pool, one is the main big pool and the final one is the infinity style pool. We avoided the main big pool like the plague as it was constantly noisy and spent every day by the much quieter infinity pool area. It's a lovely pool with areas of shade and areas in full sun, a bar whose staff were excellent and access to the beach where there were also areas to sunbathe. The beach is lovely golden sand but don't expect to be able to swim in the sea as the waves will batter you into submission, it's nice to have a paddle in the water's edge though. It's such a shame as the water is lovely and warm.

For food you really are spoilt for choice as pretty much everyone is catered for. The main restaurant is buffet style for breakfast, lunch & dinner but there are 3 other restaurants (4 if you are in the adult only section, which we weren't so cannot comment on this one) that must be booked with limited availability each day for 2 sittings (7pm & 9pm). These can be booked at reception or via the RIU app, I highly recommend using the app as you can book these as soon as the booking slots are opened usually at 8am each day for a few days in advance.

The 3 other bookable restaurants are listed as al-a-carte but in all our time there only the BOA VISTA restaurant had this option on the main course, the rest was just buffet style, which was disappointing, especially as each restaurant has a menu outside listing the al-a-carte options, mostly the buffet was the same as what you could get in the main restaurant, albeit the setting was more relaxed due to the limited capacity of each restaurant. The 3 restaurants are as follows:

BOA VISTA - Supposedly food showcasing traditional cape verde cuisine. Only ate here once as the food wasn't great.

DA MARCELLO - Italian style cuisine, very tasty selection of mains and desserts.

KABUKI - Asian style cuisine, again this was brilliant with a large selection of food not available in the main restaurant.

We avoided the Bereber buffet restaurant as when we dined there on our first day there were a lot of flys on the food under the heaters. Not ideal.

Entertainment in an evening was OK enough, the quiz section was absolutely ridiculous as the questions were all about other RIU hotels, not exactly a quiz more potluck (unless you're a RIU need then you'd be well away!) There’s always plenty for kids to do with mini games set up on a daily basis for a few hours and there's a sports style bar showing football if that's what you want to do with your evenings on holiday.

All in all it was OK, cannot fault the staff, they were all fantastic, the place just feels dated and in need of a...