Hotel Review: Portaventura Caribe Hotel, Salou, Spain

This article was updated in June 2026 to reflect the most recent price and amenity information for the Portaventura Caribe Hotel.

We are regular visitors to Portaventura, and the Portaventura Caribe Hotel is the one we would most recommend to families. It has a laid-back, Carribean feel, two large pool areas including one pool with its own artificial beach and sand bottom, and a wide selection of other amenities.

From a practical perspective, what makes the Portaventura Caribe Hotel so appealing is its proximity to the Portaventura Theme Parks, and the fact that it included theme park access with the package which meant it was a cost-effective option.

There are six official, on-site Portaventura owned and operated hotels. Five of these offer a 4 star rating including the Hotel Caribe, and there is one 5 star hotel on property. The El Paso is the only Portaventura Hotel that offers an all-inclusive approach (you can read our review of this hotel here) while we chose to visit the Hotel Caribe on a full-board basis.

Here’s our full, tried and tested first-hand review of Portaventura’s Hotel Caribe, covering everything you need to know:

QUICK BOOKING BOX:
The Portaventura Caribe Hotel is best booked as part of a packages including flights and transfers, for the easiest and most family-friendly approach. We recommend sunshine.co.uk because you can book with just a £19 pp deposit and pay in easy installments.
👉 Check prices and availability for your preferred dates here

The Amenities At The Portaventura Caribe Hotel

The highlight of the Portaventura Caribe hotel is its 2 absolutely enormous pools. One of these is a beach-style pool which is fringed with white sand and even has sand at the bottom which is a wonderful and unique experience.

The boys could swim and play sandcastles just like they were at the beach, but we were only 10 steps from our hotel room. This was a great place to spend lazy mornings, and escape from the heat, saving the park for later in the day.

The other pool was a conventional pool surrounded by sun loungers and palm trees. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about the pools here, we loved them and used them every single day of our stay.

If you’re short on space (flying hand luggage only perhaps) then you can hire pool towels at the hotel. There’s a €15 initial deposit and €2 payable per towel. The initial deposit of €15 will be refunded but the €2 per towel is non-refundable.

It is important to note the lifeguards here are STRICT! No inflatables are allowed and you will need to bring a strap for your sunglasses if you want to wear them in the pool. These are the ones we use, because they float if you do drop them in the water.

If you’re used to a traditional AI hotel with nightly entertainment then you might be a little disappointed. Going into the Portaventura theme park itself is your entertainment here, and the evening entertainment in the park is excellent.

There were evening mini discos and small dancing shows with Woody the Woodpecker in the hotel, and these were great for kids. But you shouldn’t expect high quality nightly entertainment. because this hotel doesn’t offer it.

The Location Of The Portaventura Caribe Hotel

This is the Portaventura hotel that is actually furthest away from Portaventura. In fact, for us this was the main drawback of the Portaventura Caribe hotel over the other on-site hotels available. It took around 15 minutes to walk from our hotel room to the theme park entrance.

Having said that, it is also generally the cheapest of the official onsite Portaventura hotels. You will make a significant financial saving if you’re prepared to enjoy a short walk every day!

The hotel is also advertised as being a 20-minute walk away from Salou seafront, but whoever wrote this must have a much faster walking speed than we do! Our youngest was 6 at this point, and had the walking speed of a typical 6 year old, so it was actually a 40 minute walk.

Most of the time we ended up taking a taxi whenever we wanted to heat into Salou, particularly in the head of the day when a 40 minute walk wasn’t especially appealing!

On the plus side, the fact that the hotel was set a little further back from the theme park did mean that it was nice and quiet. Ideal for a secluded and relaxing break, if that’s what you’re looking for.

The Food At The Portaventura Caribe Hotel

We were booked into the hotel on a full board basis: they don’t offer All Inclusive here but you could all choose from either B&B, half board, or full board options.

The food in the hotel was good, and there were loads of choices suitable for the kids and for our more refined adult palettes, but I wouldn’t say it was the best AI-type food we’ve ever had.

The best meal in the hotel was breakfast, with full English, continental, and traditional Spanish options available. There was only one main buffet restaurant in the hotel which you could eat in with your full board booking. Because we were staying for 10 days, eating every meal in the same restaurant for 10 days did start to feel a little repetitive.

Having said that, there was always an abundance of fresh salad, fruits and vegetables. There was always pizza, chicken nuggets, chips etc for plain eaters or fussy kids. And the desserts were good too. The meat and main menu options were a little uninspiring, but I always found something I wanted to eat.

The hotel also has separate ala carte restaurants available for an extra charge, but we didn’t try these.

It’s worth noting that your full board package doesn’t include drinks and these can be a bit pricey.

Eating in The Portaventura Park

If you are staying in a Portaventura hotel then you are able to exchange your hotel meals for theme park meal vouchers in lieu of eating in the hotel buffet. These are called “Dine Around” vouchers.

These vouchers are valued at €24 per adult and €12 per child.

You can use these to either pay for a restaurant meal in full, or choose a slightly fancier restaurant and pay any extra amount payable. We did this nearly every day and it allowed us to try all of the nicer restaurants in the theme parks, which we loved. It also meant we didn’t need to leave the park when we were ready to eat.

The Rooms At The Portaventura Caribe Hotel

Finally the rooms! These were basic but comfortable. They were small, but we had plenty of space to move around. We had a good sized balcony that looked out over the pool, and we enjoyed sitting here in the afternoons.

The set up was 2 double beds: one of which was a fold up bed. The boys shared this while we used the standard double. I would have preferred to see the family rooms offer two single beds, especially for older kids.

The bathroom had a bath and a shower and huge mirrors. There was a hairdryer, but this wasn’t particularly powerful. If you need something more powerful then pack your own!

Another bonus of this hotel was the English speaking TV channels. There were plenty of options for the kids, including the Disney Channel. I appreciate you won’t want to spend your holiday watching the TV, but it meant the boys had something to watch and somewhere to unwind while we were getting ready for dinner!

Booking the Hotel Caribe

For our stay at the Hotel Caribe Portaventura, we chose to book a package holiday with sunshine.co.uk, rather than booking the hotel and flights separately.

We often find that package holidays offer the best value for families, especially if you have to travel during school holidays. We were able to secure our flights, accomodation, and ATOL protection in one simple booking.

This is easy, affordable, and convenient. We also took advantage of their low £19pp deposit and installment payment system. If you’re planning a visit to Portaventura World, I definitely recommend comparing package holiday prices to see which offers the best value for you.

CHECK PACKAGE PRICES:
👉 Check current prices and availability with sunshine.co.uk for your preferred dates here

Final Thoughts and Further Reading

The Portaventura Hotel Caribe is a hotel that gets mixed reviews. I read many of these myself before booking our visit. But I think a lot of the problems come from people expecting an all-inclusive traditional hotel experience. And that’s simply not what this hotel has to offer!

But if you think of it as a theme park hotel I think you’ll be very pleasantly surprised. The pools are excellent, the food is plentiful, and the ‘dine around’ voucher system is a wonderful addition.

We had a great experience, and it’s somewhere we would be happy to go back to.

Still planning your Portaventura experiences? Check out our other Portaventura articles:

👉The Ultimate Family Guide To PortAventura Theme Park (2026)
👉Hotel Review: El Paso Hotel, PortAventura, Spain

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