TUI BLUE Manar — Hotel in Maghreb

Had a fantastic time at the Tui Blue Manar last week, we had amazing weather and the facilities are excellent. I'll go into detail below but whether you're going as a family, a couple or solo, you'll have a good time. We went as a couple so my review won't mention much kid's entertainment. Warning, this is a very long review, most of it is complimentary about the experience.||Airport transfers: time to get to hotel will vary depending on number of stops but I'd say a good average is about 1hr40. There was a different number of stops coming than when we were going.||Arrival: admittedly I was a bit annoyed because when we arrived we were given a form to fill in which wasn't ideal after a long day of travelling for us. As I was filling the form in thankfully the reception staff became much more friendly and offered us both a welcome drink (a refreshing cold fruit juice) and macarons. The basics were explained to us and we then went to our room, a concierge took our luggage up just a few minutes later.||Room: we booked a standard room with a balcony. We were in 1209 on the second floor directly above swim up rooms and with a view of the gardens and the Manar 2 building. Room had a kettle with coffee sachets, tea bags and bottled water, a mini fridge with still and sparkling water, and a safe. The room wasn't overly flashy but it served us well. The bed was a bit firm which I loved but my boyfriend didn't, but I guess that's a preference thing.||Resort: there's 3 pools, a beach, a gym, a spa, tennis and padel courts, a conference building and amphitheatre, an al a carte restaurant, a main buffet restaurant, and a few other places to get drinks and food. We preferred the activity pool with the swim up bar and music but there's a relax pool for a quieter experience and a slide pool. ||Staff: almost all staff were extremely friendly and helpful. Only exception were a few bar staff who seemed a bit miserable but they were young and I found out that they work extremely long hours. Special thank you to Ramzi in the main restaurant, he served us on our first night and then every day of our stay. He remembered our preferred drinks from the first night and would immediately bring them to our table. He even arranged a cute flower display for us on our last morning. He took good care of us. Amelia and Charlie, the Tui reps were great to see regularly and Amelia helped answer various random questions I had.||Food: having been on a few all inclusive trips before I have to say the food here is above average. There's a good variety of food to satisfy fussy eaters or children who just want chicken nuggets, and more adventurous people who want to try something different. Most meals had at least one "star" dish that we loved. There's theme nights in the main restaurant, highlights for us were the Asian night (even though there weren't curries as stated on the Tui Blue app) and the local cuisine night. The snack bar restaurant opens at 12:30 and in our opinion has the best food, delicious pizzas and grilled meats. I didn't realise until the last night that there is an outdoor area in the main restaurant that serves pizzas, maybe being told would've been helpful. ||I do have a few small complaints about the food. Firstly, not everything is labelled, so you don't have any idea what the dish is, like a dessert that I thought was a chocolate dessert and will mention soon. Secondly, there were frequently not enough serving cutlery to serve the food. I saw people resort to using their hands and then the staff would tell them off for it. Thirdly, I think the labels naming the dish should include the ingredients. On the local cuisine night I loaded up a plate with local desserts only to realise when eating them that they largely consist of an ingredient I don't like (marzipan). Same with the chocolate looking dessert in the glass dishes. This was actually an aniseed pudding which I also didn't like and I ended up wasting most of the dessert I took that evening.||Drinks: we all know alcoholic drinks at all inclusive resorts are watered down and the same is true here. I'm thankful for it, it means I'm still hydrated even after only drinking cocktails all day and I'm not passed out by 1pm. Good variety of delicious cocktails and my boyfriend says the craft beer was quite nice. Plenty of soft drinks and mocktails for kids or sober individuals. Nice to have a different fresh smoothie every day for breakfast too. Name brand sodas like Fanta and Coca Cola were a nice touch.||Entertainment: as you can tell by the length of this review, I am a very boring person and so is my boyfriend. As a result, we didn't once participate in the evening entertainment, instead going to our room after dinner and watching stuff on the TV. There were plenty of activities throughout the day though, from yoga to sports to games in the pool. Whether you're a normal person or boring like me, you will be happy.||Local area: about a 5-10 minute walk from the hotel you will find a variety of local shops and restaurants. Prepare to haggle! Luckily I found a supermarket and a shop called Scorpion where there was no haggling required, just pay the price on the tag. There's also a shop just outside the lobby on the resort grounds selling essentials (plus snacks and inflatables etc) but things are a bit more expensive than outside the resort.||Illness: I got sick twice despite only being there 5 days. First one I toughed out but second one I needed a bit of medicinal assistance. Sadly when I went to reception to ask for the onsite nurse early in the morning, I was told they don't arrive until 10am, so we walked i to the town to the local pharmacy and got medication that helped enormously. I'm sure if you get so ill that you can't walk to a pharmacy, the staff will assist you.||Spa: I paid 225 dinar for a lomi lomi massage at the spa. It was very forceful but brilliant, the woman was very friendly and thorough. ||Extra bits: there are cats around the resort and cat care stations where they leave water and leftover buffet food for the cats. Nice for cat lovers like myself! One of the cats looked very sick and most didn't like being approached. Sadly I saw a kid try and kick one of the cats but thankfully it got away. If you hate cats don't worry, they are few and far between and won't hassle you.|You can exchange your local currency into Tunisian dinar at the hotel, but keep the receipt. You cannot change your dinars back at the hotel and need your receipt to change it back at the airport or a bank.|We only got approached by third party excursion operators twice and they both left quickly but politely after being told no.|I've previously been bitten all over by mosquitoes on holidays to North Africa but thankfully I only got bitten twice during my trip. Maybe because I stayed in every evening but still. Yes, flies are everywhere but that's expected.|The WiFi is AMAZING! I had WiFi throughout the entire resort, even on the beach, and it was strong enough to stream movies on Netflix. It is free 24/7, I've never had such good WiFi.||Overall a very relaxing experience with beautiful weather and lovely staff. Thank you to everyone at the Tui Blue Manar for looking after us and giving us such a...

A long review but worth the read if you want to know the real experience of staying here, which I didn't get from any TripAdvisor reviews before I booked. Just got back from a 2 week stay, here's my experience of Manar. Let's start with the positive:||||Pros:||||Beach - awesome. The white sand and the turquoise Mediterranean sea is perfect. There are jellyfish though.||||Hotel grounds - beautiful. Lots of flowers and palms.||||Pools and slides - the 3 pools are good each with a different vibe, slides aren’t the biggest but are fun.||||Rooms - really good, modern, nicely furnished, we’re staying in a room in the manar 2 building and paid for a sea view. The room is a stone's throw from the beach with the best view I've ever had in a hotel.||||Ok, now the cons, which unfortunately are pretty big:||||Cons;||||Sleep - major problem. Don't expect to get any rest here….at all. This is the worst sleep I've ever had. No joke. For the first week we were woken up at 1am by the people in the room above us, which would be ok but the entire rest of the hotel wakes up between 6 and 7am and there's LOTS of banging doors and furniture screeching. ||||So we lived on 5 hrs sleep for 7 nights. We put up with it (probably shouldn't have) but eventually complained to the TUI rep and they worked fast to give us a new room. Unfortunately that only improved our sleep from 5hrs to 6, as the music from other hotels down the beach stops at almost 12am at the weekend and then our neighbours below and next door get up at 5:30. That would be ok if it was 10mins of noise then quiet when they went to breakfast, but housekeeping is straight in there at ridiculous o'clock banging and moving the furniture as well. We’re exhausted, which is not what I expect from a holiday.||||Food - very average, pretty standard for an all inclusive, but I did expect more. Hardly any options for vegetarians. Omelets and fried eggs are all fried next too and on tip of each other so no chance of a veggie omelette or fried egg without meat juice. Same stuff every night.||||Flies - a real problem. I wasn't prepared for the amount of flies in Tunisia, you can't relax on a sun lounger without getting harassed by flies. Eating at the snack bar is awful, with 10 flies on your table, constantly landing on your food, cutlery, hand, face and mouth. Disgusting honestly. The restaurant is slightly better but the flies are still all over the food in the canteen and at your table. The pool is the only place where you can escape them.||||Entertainment - dire. If you like cheesy music then this is the place for you. YMCA and Come on Eileen are played every day. Evening entertainment is poor. The acts are repeated and are of low quality.||||Staff - mixed. Lifeguards are generally good, security is good, but the hotel is very badly managed and the hotel reception doesn't really do anything when asked. Housekeeping is pretty bad, beds made badly, mugs not cleaned, start far too early (as mentioned) and don't leave any water in the room. Waiters are pretty poor, tables are not laid after another guest leaves, so you sit down with no cutlery, waiters take ages to bring drinks or don't bother asking you.||||Sun loungers - total joke as others had said. All gone by 7am. Some rude people bring their own towels, use them to get loungers and also use the provided pool towels to get more, spreading one towel across two loungers to reserve even more. Today I saw a family with 10 loungers reserved for a family of 4 and complained when at 1pm somebody sat on one on the other side of the pool that they hadn't used all day. Lifeguards should be clamping down on this ||||Broken personal item during stay - during my stay housekeeping dropped and broke a piece off a large crystal that I had bought from the market. I noticed this on returning to my room and the housekeeper had removed the broken piece, presumably to try to pretend nothing has happened.||||Luckily I had a photo of the piece before it had been broken, so I reported this to reception along with the photos of before and after the damage. The hotel did nothing for several days, so eventually I reported it to the TUI rep. After a couple more days, I asked for the hotel email and sent an official complaint asking for a refund of the 80 TND (£20) that a paid for it. ||||Next day I received an email from the TUI rep saying that there was no proof that the housekeeping staff broke it so the hotel and TUI would accept no liability, I threatened them with reporting it to the police and was told to go ahead. The TUI rep said that I have travel insurance for a reason. ||||Obviously I was completely disgusted with this stance, as obviously I don't have CCTV in my room to collect evidence. As the hotel provider TUI are responsible for the entire holiday including the actions of the staff, but were completely failing in that responsibility.||||Unfortunately for them, in order to claim on my travel insurance I would need a police report/log number. I proceeded to ask reception to call the police, which ultimately called their bluff. Lots of running round and flapping by the staff, customer manager and the rep, and moments later they completely flipped their story. ||||Now threatened with the police they admitted liability, and agreed to pay me off. They also said the housekeeper, who moments earlier “had not broken anything”, was now apparently instantly sacked. Once more disgusted by the lack of morality I told them they could shove their £20 and the woman should NOT be sacked. I walked away and still don't know if she was.||||The whole incident left me extremely disappointed with the hotel management and the TUI rep. I plan to file a complaint to the tourism office in Tunisia on my return which can result in a hotel inspection/fine and also to TUI. Needless to say the item is now in my cramped safe along with everything else half valuable.||||I got food poisoning the morning before our flight and while lying on a sun lounger in the shade (as we’d been kicked out of our room at 12pm and our flight wasn’t for another 11 hrs) a fight broke out in the pool in front of me during water polo. Which just topped it off really.||||So yeah, we’ve still enjoyed our holiday despite the above but I wouldn't return to Tunisia because of the flies, will probably never use TUI again, and definitely won't be returning to this hotel because I need more than 5hrs sleep.||||Enjoyable but not rejuvenating, trying to catch up on sleep now, need another holiday just to recover!||||Hope this helped.||||Note: from looking at previous responses from the hotel on negative reviews the hotel manager will probably refute all of this but rest assured it's the truth and I have the paper trail to back it up, which has been sent to the National Office of Tourism for Tunisia as a complaint...

The hotel right on a pleasant, sandy beach, and is about 8km from the old centre of Hammamet - 20 minutes/20 Dinar in a taxi, and about 40 miles (1h20min by shared coach) from Enfidha Hammamet airport. Not much of note to see in the immediate vicinity but lots to keep us entertained within the hotel resort.||We found the hotel to be of a good quality. The standard rooms had all we needed and were sufficiently spacious, with a decent balcony and bathroom with separate wc. Air con was fine. Room cleaning, when required, was done well. The wider grounds of the hotel seemed to be well cleaned at the end of each day BUT we found the various areas were not cleaned during the day, with discarded cups and food wrappers, stained tables, etc, which encouraged the local fly population.||The was a large variety of food to choose from in the main buffet restaurant, including local dishes, Mediterranean staples, pasta, pizza, breads, salads, etc. The food seemed fresh and of a good quality. As a vegan, I had lots to choose from each day but the choices seemed to be repeated with little-to-no variation each day. The food in the 'vegetarian' section was not well-labelled, so it required some guesswork as to whether they were vegan or not. The potato salad contained fish. And one dessert was supposedly vegan but contained honey. ||We had one trip to the a la carte Baia restaurant by the beach. The food and drinks seemed to be of a slightly higher standard here, with effort put into presentation. The staff in Baia were very accommodating and made a fuss of my son, who had a significant birthday, providing a nice cake etc. Service was slow, though.||Other food options were the panini bar and the snack bar, both of which offered decent options but had restricted opening times. No food after the main restaurant closed at 9:30pm, so we took a couple of walks (15 mins) to the local town to procure crisps etc when we got the late night munchies. ||Decent variety of soft and alcoholic drinks included with the All Inclusive package. Several of the bar staff seemed to make cocktails with far too much alcohol, though, making them taste unpleasant. ||What wasn't included in the All Inclusive package:|- High Ropes course: 40 Dinar (about £10)|- Padel court: 100 Dinar for 90 minutes (about £25) - note that these are uncovered, outdoor courts so you might want to wait until late afternoon/evening to play in the heat of summer.|- Shisha bar: 35 Dinar|- Watersports: 140 Dinar (about £35) for 2 people on a jet ski for 15 minutes|Note that we successfully haggled with some of the above.||Our experience of the staff varied. The vast majority seemed professional and efficient. Some were very friendly. Some seemed disinterested or cold or grumpy, but perhaps that is a cultural thing. Service was sometimes patchy - variously slow, forgetful, lacking warmth and/or the personal touch...and sometimes great. On the whole, I felt like 'just a number', which is perhaps to be expected in these large tourist hotels.||The entertainment team did their best at what I imagine was the back end of the Summer season (mid-September), with limited engagement from the holidaymakers, who mainly consisted of families with pre-school children, youngish couples or older couples. The patrons seemed to be maybe 20% British with roughly equal proportions of French, Germans, Belgians, Tunisians and Moroccans. The daily programme of activities was fun and varied, with some decent evening entertainment. We appreciated the various pools, slides, table tennis, football pitch and padel courts.||Free Wi-fi throughout the hotel and even on the beach was great.||We took a trip to Hammamet old Medina, which was largely not the most positive experience. We found it to be very touristy, and we were short-changed, misled and, in some cases, aggressively encouraged to buy very poor quality fake football shirts. Beware.||We had a similarly negative experience at Enfidha Hammamet airport. On arrival, we had an issue at customs and found the security guy to be rude and seemingly on a gleeful power trip. After going through customs on departure, my daughter realised that she no longer had a carrier bag of food and gifts that she had bought in the airport concourse. On returning to the x-ray machine, the operator sheepishly tied up the handles of her bag and passed it back to her without a word. Later, she discovered that he had eaten most of the bag of crisps she had bought! These kind of experiences have put us off from returning to the country in future.||Overall, we were happy with the hotel and we all really enjoyed the holiday. The three things I would appreciate to turn 'good' into 'great' would be:|- More warm and consistent service from the staff (perhaps they are doing their best under challenging conditions)|- More daily attention to cleaning of public areas|- Better labelling of food...