We stayed in RIU Tikida Garden for 7 nights from late May to early June.
The Good:
The hotel looks very nice and this applies to both the indoor and outdoor areas. The bedrooms are spacious and air conditioned and there is a good selection of pools and Cabana sun beds. Some of the hotel staff were very nice. The Tui Blue staff (Khaled, Darren, Chloe, Hassan, Jemma) were very friendly. Some of the sessions you could book through their app were great (we enjoyed tea making and the tagine demonstration). There was good evening entertainment on a couple of the nights.
The Bad:
There were problems with the overall service e.g. suitcase not being delivered to room (it was just left in reception for 1.5 hours until I came to collect it) and no extra pillow given despite asking for it twice.
The rooms were very basic. There were no toiletries (just soap). I requested toiletries on the RIU app and didn’t get anything.
The mini fridge was empty (there was not even water in there) and they said it’s because of COVID which is not a legitimate excuse - there is no reason they cannot stock a mini fridge when cleaners are entering the room daily anyway, even if it is just once before check-in. There was also no alcohol available in the rooms.
The a la carte restaurant generally felt unprepared/rushed. The food was the same as what you can order in the buffet so there was no point in going.
Some of the waiting staff were rude. Once I said I didn’t want a hot drink at breakfast and about an hour later I asked for a coffee. The waiter gave me attitude and said he asked me earlier and I said no so why do I want it now? He looked at me as if I actually had to explain myself to him before he would get me the coffee.
The food options were limited and repetitive. A lot of things were unlabelled. For every meal the buffet options were essentially a tagine, the same pizzas / pastas and salads. There were occasionally new options. One day there were mussels at lunch which I made the mistake of trying… this led to me getting food poisoning which affected me for the final four days of the holiday. I had not eaten anything outside of the hotel kitchens and the onset of symptoms was several hours after having the mussels. I was extremely unwell and actually considered going to hospital on the first night. This clearly affected the rest of the trip significantly and put a massive downer on our stay.
The lady on the spa reception was rude and was watching things on her phone with earphones every time we saw her. They shut for an excessive two hour lunch break each day which meant you cannot use the gym which is unnecessary since it is unmanned anyway. This may be a third party to the hotel but since it is on the hotel site they should surely take some responsibility for a service they make accessible to their guests.
Main reception staff were also rude.
In the middle of packing we left the room to grab a water and came back 30 mins before check-out to find the cleaner cleaning down for the next guests despite us paying for late checkout so we had to hurry through it and wait in reception rather than the room we had paid for.
Some of the toilets by the pools had no hand dryers / towels so you could not dry your hands and the tennis balls were old/damaged and need replacing. Prosecco is not included in the ‘all-inclusive’ unlike other RIU hotels we have stayed in.
Only those who tipped the waiting staff received table service / friendly faces. We instead prefer to tip at the end of the holiday but this leads to worse service throughout.
As you can see, whilst there are some positives, there is an extensive list of problems. Perhaps many of them are excusable or can be ignored, however, poor food hygiene and food poisoning completely wiping out four days of the holiday is not acceptable under any circumstances. This is the kind of thing you hear happening at cheap, low star-rated hotels, not Tui blue RIU all-inclusive ones....
Read more
Learn more insights from Wanderboat AI.
