PortAventura Hotel Caribe — Hotel in Salou

My son and I stayed here for 4 nights in August for the sole purpose of visiting the parks - we had a very last minute booking.||LOCATION|Technically its a 15 minute walk to the park, but trust me after a long day queuing/standing on your feet all day.... it feels like a marathon. Had I realised this I would have booked a hotel in the park for the price that we paid... I invertedly booked the "executive" Club San Juan without realising - more on that later.|On the last day we took a walk into town and the beach - about 20mins walk. The beach, from what we could see was nice enough, but it was absolutely heaving, so we didn't stay long. The main strip by the beach front is as to be expected, lots of tourist shops and over priced tat.||HOTEL|The grounds are nice enough, shame that there was a huge water type area between the 2 main pools that was pretty much neglected. It was like a foots worth of water with a dirty sand ground - they could have done so much more with that. The greenery and flowers were lovely though.||RECEPTION|The staff on reception were helpful and nice enough, I did always try to go when it was not busy with new arrivals. The main disappointing thing about the reception was the complete lack of air-con. Usually when you arrive in a hotel, the first thing I notice when I walk in is the cool air-con - none here.. poor staff.||ROOM|As I mentioned, we had booked the "executive" Club San Juan suite. The room was large, but I'm not entirely sure what made the room be classified "executive". The finishes were pretty standard, there was NO kettle or tea/coffee making facilities what so ever. And a tiny fridge that was only just cool. Beds were comfy though.|NB. if you are travelling light, don't forget to pack conditioner. None provided.|The Club San Juan came with an air-conditioned restaurant on the ground floor of the block where you could have a quieter breakfast and an aperitif at 7.30pm - not dinner. The main server there was lovely and friendly. They could have done so much more with this area though. Even just providing water from a tap would have been nice. It felt like there should have been a hotel representative there providing information and services as there was indeed an office type area there.|There was also a small pool there for the residents of the block only. Nothing to write home about. It was fairly cold even in August as it was in the shade for a good part of the day. The pool itself was quite dirty if you dived under and had a look at the ground. We spent a total of 1 hour there for our 4 night visit.||FOOD|Main Buffet: Just what you would expect from a hotel buffet in a 4 star hotel. There were some staples that seemed to be there all the time, as well as different main courses. Some items were cooked in front of you which was a nice touch. Overall the food was fine.|There is an app to book time slots, but we did indeed arrive late a few times and they didn't seem to mind.|I did find it VERY odd that you were not allowed to fill bottles from the water taps. Its not like there were huge queues for this. Probably just a ploy to purchase their over priced water from the vending machines.|There was a pool bar, but oddly every time we went to get something they never had it in stock, or they had just closed the kitchen. I think the most we got there was 2 soft drinks and a coffee.|There were other restaurants that you could book for evening meals at the hotel, but we never saw them open.||There is a option available whereby you can opt to eat in one of the restaurants in the theme parks, or at the buffet of one of their sister hotels in the park. I think it was something like you get a voucher for €20 per adult and €10 per child per meal. We had an evening meal in the Ristorante Cavallino in FerarriLand - and it was terrible. Would not recommend.||POOLS|There were 2 main pools, one of them was sandy which we loved. The rules at the pools however were ridiculous. You are not allowed ant water toys what so ever!!! If you want to wear glasses or sunglasses you have to purchase this band to attach to them - for what possible reason I have so clue. If they say its for health and safety that is absolute nonsense. I have never been in a pool in a hotel where you were not allowed toys and glasses!!!!|That said, the pools were nice and there was no mad rush for the sun loungers even in August.||TICKETS|We were lucky enough to have free unlimited entry to the main park - PortAventura Park and 1 day pass to FerarriLand included with our stay. We also had fast passes included. Now I don't know if it was a miss-communication or a lack of knowledge but the lady at reception explained that we would have 10 fast pass rides for 2 days at PortAventura. I repeated that we would have 10 on one day and another 10 on the next day and she confirmed - sadly this was not the case and it did scupper our plans a bit as you have to use them on consecutive days. But we were most grateful to have had them!|You can purchase discounted entry tickets to the parks from machines in the lobby, or the water park tickets from the one downstairs.|What I was NOT impressed with was the fact it says that you can book discounted fast pass tickets directly from the hotel...so we didn't pre-purchase them from the website. Big mistake. You can only by fast passes for the same or next day. If you look on the website, it is much cheaper to book in advance. So I wish I had booked online before hand.|||PARKS|There are 3 parks all next to each other a 15 min walk from the hotel.|The main one is PortAventura park - its huge. We really enjoyed this, mostly thanks to the fast passes we had. But also by using the "single rider" option on the big rides.|The water park is the Caribe Aquatic park, again, this is mainly enjoyable if you have fast passes. If not, as you can imagine there is a fair amount of queuing. but all in all we had a great time here.|The smaller park is FerarriLand - honestly, if you are not into cars and you don't have a free ticket included in your package, don't bother. There are only 2 main rides there and one of them...

The Hotel, needs a evaluation in what they call a 4 star hotel experience. Paying about £250 a night ish, around that price point.||||The good:||||- Food: The food was very good, pat on back to the chefs at the Costa Caribe hotel. It was a good variety of food, when in the correct restaurant; ||more on that later, that tasted great and offered flexible options at breakfast and lunch.||||- Cleanliness: The hotel cleanliness was overall good, no issues with the room and maids kept rooms nicely cleaned and beds fresh throughout our stay. ||||- Service: General staff service was good, bartenders were friendly and accommodating. Buffet staff were fast and efficient, ||quite professional and kept the service going at a good speed. Reception staff were also friendly and fast considering our booking issue; more on that later.||||The bad:||||- Booking: So we booked our holiday as a private booking not stringed together. We did book the same holiday as my parents and brother, also private bookings. ||For some reason the hotel had received our bookings as joint, or just were completely missing one of the bookings, so the reception staff had to scramble for ||30 minutes trying to sort out all three bookings ending up in room mixups. They did a good job resolving it but when your paying nearly 3k for a holiday at a 4 star hotel its not what you expect.||||- The wallet stripper: Its pretty clear that this hotel had been stripped with a clear objective. Take as much cash out of your wallet however it can. ||It started with the normal wait for the rooms to be available and being informed that now we had to pay to store our luggage while we waited at a hotel ||we had fully paid for. 4 star hotel. chain hotel. 3k. Never had a hotel pull this move before by charging for E-Lockers that store 1 large suitcase per 4 Euro and we had 7 in total and a pram. ||||Then came the water problem. Were in Spain so cant use tap water we know this. But your telling me in your '4 star' hotel there's no water fountain, ||no free water with the room and the bar is charging 3 Euro for small bottle. Can't you fill it up from the buffet? The 50 signs plastered around saying ||you can't say otherwise. Btw its 1.50 euro for 8 liters of water at a supermarket in town, we figured that out since that was the best choice of water for the holiday to accommodate for our 4 star hotel.||||The youth retreat: So turns out during Spanish half term that lots of kids use these hotels for school holidays as a resting stop. ||We figured out pretty quickly from having our balcony furniture go for midnight walks, being woken up in the middle of night to parties ||and being kicked out the buffet restaurant to a smaller one that was tinkered into a buffet restaurant, then given the same food with no ||variety for 4 nights straight. Thanks caribe, we only paid a small sum of money to travel 1/4 way across the planet to be made the inconvenience at your hotel. ||I'm not complaining about having kids at the hotel, its a hotel use it as you want. But perhaps put up some warnings when booking, reduce the price or don't kick ||your guests to the kerb so the schools happy next time.||||Why?: The giant green sess pool in the middle of your hotel serves no purpose, is ugly, ||completely ignored and is making a great pit stop for mosquito larva. Perhaps the '4 star' experience ||for the stay isn't given to the human experience. Water park hotel by the way.||||Entertainment: There's a kids Disco and a 20 minute walk to town with no easy travel options and 1 bar with 2 overworked staff offering overpriced drinks. ||We did find watching the flies midnight sess pool dance to be quite captivating, if we were lucky enough to get one of the 6 sets of chairs on the decking outside. ||You have two pool bars at either end of the hotel, only one of which was ever used during the whole stay, ||next to two.. one good pool and one 'beach' pool from wish that offer better seating and ambience options, use them.||||Timing: This issue synergizes beautiful with the above issue. The breakfast times at this hotel are fine. However the lunch is between 7.30-10.30 top of my head. ||The problem this brings is if you go to lunch early, say you finish by 8.30, what you meant to do with the rest of evening now? Lets say you go late, ||the theme park shuts at this time of year at 6. So now you also got a few hours to stare at the shreks swamp thinking might as well go eat now. ||There used to be a mini train that was free with this hotel that could take you to Salou front or the park that worked well for this downtime but now your just stuck. ||Maybe this is more an us issue but it feels like it needs to be brought up.||||Salou itself||||There's nothing anyone can do about this its just adds to the review that needs to discussed. This holiday getaway is dead unless your only going to get drunk and buy overpriced tat, ||then knock your socks off cause this is the place for you. ||||The beach is still beautiful and the main attraction, there are some nice little restaurants that are surviving. ||Other than that its tit for tat town, come get your 10 Euro fridge magnets galore. There is nothing left here. Decent nightclub? Nope. Nice local cafe? haha. Entertainment? Sparklers. ||If you look up online where to get for local culture, a fun local nightclub or some decent form of entertainment the answer is to leave Salou. ||||Overall: ||||Unless your looking for a drinks/beach holiday I would not recommend Salou anymore and certainly wouldn't recommend this hotel. ||Its clearly been left to rot and clinging on to those 4 stars as a lifeline. We went Portugal last year in March for 1K, they had no of these issues and all the positives. ||Yes they even had 2 bars and entertainment. In March. Also 4 star hotel. Which makes this one seems like a hotel 'CoffeeZilla' needs to post a video on. ||Gladly say not staying with Port Aventura again, well to be honest, not staying in Salou again.||||If you read all this I appreciate the time you spent.||||P.S. Also heard PortAventura are buying up hotels on the front as expansion. God...

This is a review of hotel caribe not El Paso, we travel every two months or so as a family but tend to only write reviews when we have such an experience that warrants warning to others, this is very rare. We as a family have been to the PortAventura hotels resort three times, over the years, our first stay was several years ago at the main PortAventura hotel and last two times at hotel caribe. This was our first out of season stay here and was a last minute booking but we were not prepared for the hundreds of school and sports club trip children that swarmed the hotel, shouting and banging doors till all hours at night. I understand that the hotel needs to make money out of season and business is business but we were just not aware or prepared for this! ||The restaurant at breakfast was also full of children pushing in front which eventually lead us to abandoning the last two days of breakfast of our four day trip which was included in the stay, as the breakfast wasn’t great that wasn’t too much of a loss. We ate one night at the hotels buffet which was moved to the smaller coral reef restaurant as groups were using the bohio main restaurant so this was probably for the best but this was the worst buffet we have even been to in terms of taste, quality and options, I ate pate, crackers and olives for my €25 euro dinner that night!||The points system for spending at the hotel which is supposed to then earn you points to use for discounts at the end was abysmal, my hotel card worked intermittently and I was told as they have changed over their systems recently it is causing some issues with the cards, I spent an hour bringing all my receipts and for all the efforts of the different staff I was being sent to add it all up call up the main office and gets points added etc I find out the next day none of these points to had been added anyway and at this point could not be bothered to spend any more time trying to resolve this, we spent hundreds of pounds in the parks shops and restaurants and could not accumulate points, the only points that got added were from the restaurant worth €1.80 which we did not end up using!||The hotel has removed all plugs from the baths so despite having two connecting rooms we couldn’t have a bath in either room and our shower had no bottom seal so flooded the whole bathroom on each use!|We purchased express passes for the park on one of our days to find express queues on the app stated to be same as normal queue times on both the and tomahawk rides!! ||Due to it not being warm enough for outdoor pool use my kids wanted to use indoor pools, the first day we went to use the spa which was a 10 euro extra charge per person but we were informed the relevant staff member did not show up for work, the next day we did purchase the passes to them show up and be told the pool heating system was broken and water was freezing so they could not use the indoor pool throughout the stay. ||The hotel was unorganized, chaotic and although most of the staff encountered were pleasant the final icing on the cake came yesterday on check out day when we were leaving, I went reception to call a taxi, the lady called one saying it would be around 5 minutes, 10 mins later I went to report it hasn’t come, she called another, a further 10 mins later I went back and she then called another, after around 5-10 mins more I went back and a very rude male member of staff saw it fit to start shouting irate in Spanish to the female staff member obviously about me, when I went to ask this same man can they call the firm and ask if any of these taxis are coming he started abruptly stating how it’s not their responsibility all they do as reception is call the firm? I am a customer of the hotel and am going to the airport which would indicate some kind of urgency, I was unable to call an uber as it didn’t run in the area which I did not realize as uber eats does, so if I have asked your reception to call a taxi from the taxi service you use, is it not reasonable for me to ask you to speak to them and confirm they are definitely coming after three taxis have not turned up?? I Have never encountered such a low level of customer care and was left extremely disappointed with the utter rudeness and lack of customer service from this male, shocking !! Will not return to this hotel and this type of behavior from staff towards customers needs to be addressed...