The hotel building is impressive. Room was well equipped and clean. Area has lots of good restaurants and you can book activates at the local booking agent. Beaches are good, weather perfect. Felt safe, and travel is easy by taxi.
However if you are like me and wish to get sleep on holiday, this place may not be for you. 8am. Vacuum starts. Towels down by 8.30. No smoking policy not enforced. Small children allowed in pool without costume. Too few sun umbrellas. Hotel is next to main road down to beach, every manhole cover rattles. Local cars and motor bikes have a silencer problem. Travelling Tannoy passes every hour. And a plane towing adverts every half hour. Surrounded by private properties, whose owners have dogs, birds and TV on their balconies, and like a bit of DIY.
All the hotel floors are tiled, a nice idea, until the room above play musical chairs, and there is a pool tournament in the bar. Room doors close with a Hammer Horror creak and bang. Enjoyed some great food at local restaurants every evening. Then walked back to hotel and sat on balcony enjoying a glass of wine and headed to bed about eleven.
To be entertained until four am by the music from a bar across the road, which for some reason is open plan, so everyone not just the six people in the bar could hear.
Stayed here for a week in September with my wife. Other reviews touch on everything you need to know and I can only confirm that all of the GOOD reviews are completely appropriate and justified.
We stayed in room 102 which is on the ground floor and adjacent to the entry point for the pool area and small eating area. This room doesn't get much sun during the day but to be honest this isn't a problem because the (requested) balcony is so small it's a little tight for any more than one person. Upstairs rooms seem to have larger outdoor balconies which easily accommodate 2 people. Air conditioning is in the bedroom and lounge area and was very good and worked really well. You can easily access the free WiFi from this room (102) and just about anywhere around the pool area as well as the main reception area and small downstairs eating area. Our room was huge and consisted of a well appointed bathroom separate bedroom with 2 single beds (Very firm mattresses), a good sized lounge and a separate kitchen with everything you would need to cook for yourself. The apartment was spotlessly clean as was the whole building. Hats off to the cleaners. It was easy to order food and drink from the reception area and reasonably priced too. The location of the Aqua-Mar is ideal for eating out and accessing the lovely beach area. Simply cannot fault this aparthotel at all. Reasonably priced, spotlessly clean, great location for accessing bars, restaurants and the beach. I rarely use the same hotel twice but in this case I will definitely make an exception and will be looking to use it again next year. Next time I would request an upstairs room with a large balcony and one that gets the sun during the day. We arrived late at night and didn't have time to get to know the area and my only minor complaint was that the following morning when we asked the reception staff to order us a taxi to go to Villamoura they actually charged us the 50c for the phone call when they could simply have pointed us to the taxi rank over the road approximately 30 metres away. ( I know picky but worth mentioning for others who may require a taxi). Otherwise absolutely perfect place to stay...
Myself and my family were here for half term week (end of October) and what a great week we had. The staff and facilities were great and the hotel is in a perfect location. All the great reviews this place has are well deserved and the not so good reviews, well you cannot please some people !!!!!
We hope to return again to enjoy the great hotel and surrounding facilities.
