Hotel Riu Funana — Hotel in Sal

I dont even know where to start with this hotel!

Our first days seemed alright and there was a lot of selection for food and drinks which we loved however this would just be the start of an awful holiday at this terrible resort!

We got awful food poisoning from this hotel and ended up having to go to the cape verde doctors to get medical help. The buffet food had way too many flies everywhere, the open kitchen was filthy and we experienced the chefs leaving RAW fish out on the sides for a good while whilst in the heat of the kitchen and country. Futhermore the hygiene standards of the place were super low, no one used the provided sanitisers, everyone would be touching food and the tongs with filthy hands and not to mention the amount of children running around the buffet area and touching the tongs and not taking any food. We witnessed multiple times the staff change the food tongs from different plates which was causing cross contamination between food! No wonder we got food poisoning! Also, we witnessed a chef put chicken on a plate ready for customers to put onto their plate and then not even a minute later they took it back off and back onto the grill! IT WAS UNDERCOOKED! You were serving UNDERCOOKED CHICKEN!!!! Not to mention, the friers were FILTHY, using the same friers for the chips as the FISH that you were frying, god knows how long ago that oil was changed and WHY were they using the same friers for different food! That is a massive allergen concern! What if some people were allergic to fish and you are frying chips in the same oil!

On top of all of this, whilst we were really ill, the staff tried to charge us £30 to get a doctor to our hotel room as i was unable to walk to the front desk as i was too unwell and had no strength! We were then told that they didnt have a doctor on site and that they would need to call one out for us! We went to our TUI rep who ensured us that we didnt need to pay for a doctor to come to our room to give us help and also that they did infact have a doctor on SITE!!! Something that YOUR STAFF was not aware of, or was this just a way of making more money off us! This is POOR and awful standards of care for your customers!

Your swimming pool water was CLOUDY and was extremely salty?! Surely if you took care of the pool it should be chlorinated?! People were dropping drinks into the pool, someone had smashed a tea cup into the pool which they had to corner off that section to clean it, which they only got someone to jump in with a snorkel on, WHICH WAS BORROWED FROM A CUSTOMER!!!!, and look to see if they could see any more pieces of the smashed cup! Needless to mention the state of the pool was awful too, lot tiles missing from inside the pool! The enitre place needs a renovation and a clean!

Furthermore during our stay, we were made aware that the cocktail ice machines were topped up with TAP WATER! We were heavily advised to stay away from the tap water so why are you filling things that we drinking from with the tap water we were told to not drink!!!!! The dispensed drinks (fanta, coke, sprite) were also not great and made us feel ill. We didnt want to drink or eat anything after we got ill! We were provided 1.5L bottled water until they said that they had RAN OUT!? How do you run out of water in the resort! We requested multiple times that we need more water in the room and only twice they were able to bring some, and on one occasion they brought us SODA WATER!? that is not acceptable!

Overall this resort was a nightmare for us and we will NEVER return to this resort and we are seriously questioning whether to even return to a RIU Hotel ever again after this awful experience! We hope to hear that there are some serious changes to this resort and the company as a whole if this is how you are going to treat your customers! I have left 1* reviews of your hotel on multiple websites because of how poor your standards are and everyone else should be aware! It is disgusting and you...

Eldest son finished his exams so me and his nan (MIL) decided to treat him to a trip. Having been to Cape verde before I searched Tui and found a deal for Funana. Firstly my previous trips to CV were amazing. Its warm and breezy. We stayed at Melia Llana before and its BEAUTIFUL.. the staff are lovely and friendly and helpful. Our time at the Funana was a little different. We arrived at 10.30pm. No issues checking in. Very quick no problems. Food was offered (11pm). We were left to find our room ourselves which was challenging in the dark and we were tired. We eventually found the room. Clean, tidy but dated for sure. The room was tidied and cleaned daily which was appreciated. Water left but 2 bottles every 2 days between 3 was a struggle. The bathroom is a little open plan which I had worried may cause issue for teenage son but the shower has a frosted door and is fairly large so was able to dry off and put pants on in there! Air con is very basic.. the room never felt very cold bit we were comfortable. We did have to leave it on all night. The ceiling fan helped but was very noisy. There were mozzies in room and I normally react quite badly when bites, so I was prepared. Wrist band, jungle formula, Avon so soft and ck perfume (citrus). Worked pretty well for me.. had about 2 bites which have pretty much gone thank to after bite pen. The pool and sunbeds isnt not enough when hotel is busy. People were reserving loungers and if you turn up anytime after 8am you have no chance!! I gave up as I wasnt that bothered. Loungers and towels worn. Was ok but nothing special. Son enjoyed water polo and volleyball. Restaurant very busy and noisy at all times but always found a table. Food is OK.. we always found something but was repetitive. Food was always very hot and no issues for us with sickness. We tried the Chinese once and it made a nice change. Still buffet style but a few different options. Im not a big drinker at all but sometimes indulge on holiday. I took a look behind the bar and decided to pass.. local spirits only, sticky cocktail mixes. Nothing to tempt me. Used self-service coke dispensers which were sometime cold sometimes a bit warm and flat. Glasses couldve been cleaner.

At 2pm the day before we were due to leave our toilet flush stopped working. The hotel has an app which it pretty good.. can put in requests, check activities and report any issues. I filled in a request in the maintenance section and after about an hour the handyman came. He said it was fixed. One flush later the same issue.. flush wouldn&t work but water was constantly and loudly running. I called him back on app. He came and 'fixed' it again. Same thing. I called on app a third time but he didnt come (even though he said on app he had completed the job) I called down to reception.. its now 9.30pm to be told he need a part and it wasnt available until tomorrow. I said can he at least some and stop the water flowing again so we could sleep. He begrudgingly came and stopped it and offered to show me how to remove the flush panel and fix it myself!!! I was told him thats not my job. We filled the bin with water from the shower and used that to flush. The toilet wasnt working the rest of the time we were there (3pm the following day 25hrs with broken loo) no offer to swap rooms and with 1 night left we just decided to lump it. Despite toilet we decided to extend our room as coach pick up wasnt until 6.35pm. Normal checkout was 12 and they said they could let us have until 3pm for 10 euros per person per hour. So for us 3 was 90 euros. Was grieving with broken loo which we mentioned again bit not one was bothered. The staff werent unfriendly but no one went the extra mile for us. Disappointing. Overall we didnt have a bad holiday but Id definitely not return to the Funana. Its no where near 5 star and for 6 hrs flight felt like I might as well gone cheap and cheerful in Spain! Id go back for Melia Llana though! Go there, its lovely. We couldnt as its...

Honest review about Funana: some things were great, some so-so and some pretty terrible. (so they average at 3 stars for me).

Good things: great animation team, entertainment during the day and night, mostly well-prepared food (abundance of fresh fish if you are a fan, like me), cocktails made to order, lush greenery on the premises of the hotel and wonderful, absolutely wonderful people from maids to bartenders to receptionists who go out of their way to help and be friendly (although the buffet service people seemed more often than not too overwhelmed with the amount of guests).

The hotel is friendly towards the animals that live around it (both cats and dogs); please note to also be friendly to them, because the dogs are for example neutered and spayed and are not aggressive at all. Please don't forget that the island is very poor and both humans and animals struggle there!

One separate note is that people wrote bad reviews about the evening entertainment; I am not sure if this is the latest development, but there is REALLY nothing to complain about, the shows were great and choreographed by an actual professional (trust me I can tell ☺️)

beach is lovely but often wild TIP: if the sea is wild wit the red flag up, just take a 3 eur taxi to Santa Maria beach (or walk for 25 min) and chill there.. barely any waves on that part of the island!

a la carte restaurant is good (kulinarium) but please stop calling the Japanese restaurant Mandalay an a la carte as it's clearly not, it is a buffet!

not too good: the gym - it is 2022 and not 2000 and having 10 cardio machines in a room does not allow you to call something a gym. Weights and weight machines really missing. Gym and the resort is FULL of mosquitos so TIP bring msq. spray with you ;) thank me later !

some pools are marked as adult only but nobody enforces this... I forgot why I usually choose for adults only but now I remembered 🤦🏻‍♀️. Another annoying thing at the beach is that kids throw around plastic trash like plastic cups and bottles with their parents' quiet blessing. Why not bring toys for the kids? We kept stepping on half-buried plastic on the beach that by the by ends up in the ocean, and these same kids will be eating fish with plastic 30 years from now...

Anyways finally the last BAD point: the hotel is OLD, terribly OLD and rusty in many places. It is not only about the aesthetics, but also hygiene. The shower hose was leaking, towels overused, flimsy and hard on skin, tiles in the bathrooms (both our room and public) missing or broken, odor in the rooms is stale, hand dryers barely work, locks in the WC don't close.. WCs so old permanently stink of pee and some parts of the resort reek of bad sewage. RIU should really take at the very least one star off because such a blatantly rundown hotel cannot have 5* no matter how many times a day they change bedsheets.

Finally local salesmen selling tours near the beach just awfully creepy, as a young woman I did not feel safe since I had to walk in my bikini to the WCs at the beach past them multiple times a day. We all try to make a living but they were really creepy guys, hope the hotel will do something about it. The walk to the beach is also long unlike for the neighboring hotel RIU Cabo Verde that take a ±5 min shortcut.

One more thing: some nights there was cava, some not, which is BS for a 5* hotel where they cannot just say 'we run out', you have to keep up the level. All in all did not regret this but will not come back for how rundown the hotel is, the selection of drinks and the overall price-quality. Will consider going to Riu Cabo...