Anantara Vilamoura Algarve Resort

I'll preface this review by saying that our (my wife and I) experience of this hotel is unlike anything mentioned in previous reviews, and unlike anything we've ever experienced before, purely down to the number of guests, or I should say the lack of them due to C19. I have to admit that I was worried about our 10-night stay, based on the previous reviews, but since Portugal went back into the amber list in the UK, people haven't been travelling and as such, we were fortunate enough to experience what it must be like being incredibly rich! From the very start, we were treated incredibly well. On arrival, we were shown around and had the various facilities and restaurants explained to us. We had to sit by the pool for an hour while our room was prepared and this is when we first noticed how quiet it was. There can't have been more than 15 to 16 couples or groups of people around the pool. We went to our room and were impressed - the room was a nice size, with a good bed and a pool view, and after unpacking went back to the pool. The number of people at the pool rarely increased, and on some occasions reduced. We usually had breakfast at around 7:30 and got to the pool around 8:15 and we generally had an hour with the pool entirely to ourselves. Bliss! The pool service was exceptional - thanks to Fernando and his team for that. We ate in all the restaurants, and each was excellent. The breakfast buffet was also fantastic. One of the best things about the hotel was the staff - they were superb throughout. Incredibly friendly, helpful and professional, we were never short for anything. I realise the low number of guests helped but they still went out of their way when necessary and treated us like royalty. To be honest, the only negative was the cost of cocktails, which were from ???13 - 14, which is too expensive. This was a hotel stay unlike any that we are likely to experience again, short of winning a substantial amount of money! We left with the fondest of memories, and I can only hope that more guests are allowed to travel soon so that the hotel, the town and the country can get back to properly benefitting from holiday-makers.

We went to Portugal after having to cancel two other short breaks to countries that were not put on the Green list. But we filtered on 5* hotels to ensure we did not end up in a Benidorm type hotel, unfortunately we turned up and because there was a lack of staff we immediately encountered poor service, no greeting when we arrived, and because the flights from the UK were all early morning flights we arrived at the hotel at midday but were just told to go and sit by the pool because our room would not be ready for a while. In fact it turned out we had to wait 3 hours even though they told us they would let us know as soon as it was ready, which they did not, we had to go back to reception to chase. There was no shade by the pool, and all sunbeds etc were taken, so we sat in our travelling cloths sweltering with no shade. While waiting for 3 hours we were told by other guests about the long queues at breakfast, the other guests getting up at 6am to put towels on sunbeds, the fact that many guests who had booked via BA had been put in rooms overlooking a car park (there is no mention of car park view rooms on the website), other guests were waiting to have meetings with management to go through their complaints. We heard about unavailability of the restaurants for dinner bookings, that guest services never answered the phone and so on. So, when we went back to reception to chase up the room we immediately told them about all the things we had seen and heard and insisted on booking restaurants for all of our stay there and then, and asked about sunbeds, because there were some by the adult pool that had a sign saying they were reserved, but no one on reception knew how they were reserved. We finally got given our room key, and discovered what was described as a garden view room actually over looked the tennis court, it was like sitting in a sports arena when you went on the balcony. We changed and went back to the adult pool, where they pool bar people told us they didn't know how the sunbeds were reserved either, but they gave us the name of a guy who they thought dealt with the reservations, it turned out he was the butler manager for the three most expensive suites and basically he reserved some of the sunbeds for his guests every day whether they wanted them or not. So we went back to reception later and asked to speak to him, and we told them we were not happy with our room. The butler manager came and spoke to us, and when I said the grabbing sunbeds at 6am was what I would expect if I had gone to Benidorm he told me the trouble was all the Brits that normally go to Benidorm had come to their hotel when Portugal was put on the green list. He promised us two sunbeds in the reserved area for the rest of our stay but I pointed out that no of their staff knew what the procedure was and they had no way of communicating to people that the reserved sunbeds were free if his guests did not want them, he had no answer to that. Reception offered us an alternative room on our second day, and it was much better, looking out over the golf course, and nearer to all the facilities so we moved to the new room. Portugal changed to Amber on our 3 day and half term was over so the hotel emptied out vastly compared to when we arrived and it was noticeably better, no queues at breakfast, lots of sunbeds available etc. One last thing, Joao at the Cascades adult pool bar was fantastic during all our stay, he was trying to help guests find sunbeds all the time, and was constantly making sure guests had drinks and tried to help with anything that guests needed help with, he should be put in charge of the pool bar as he works not stop throughout his shifts at the bar.