Hotel Review: Portaventura Caribe Hotel, Salou, Spain
We had been to Portaventura when the boys were toddlers and wanted to go back now they were old enough to really enjoy the theme park (and were tall enough for some of the rides).
So we chose to visit the Portaventura Caribe Hotel. We chose this for 2 main reasons: 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.
We stayed on a full board basis for 10 days. We booked with TUI, and I’ve popped the link here.
- The Amenities At The Portaventura Caribe Hotel
- The Location Of The Portaventura Caribe Hotel
- The Food At The Portaventura Caribe Hotel
- The Rooms At The Portaventura Caribe Hotel
The Amenities At The Portaventura Caribe Hotel
The highlight of the hotel is its 2 absolutely huge 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.
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. 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.
The lifeguards here are STRICT! No inflatables are allowed and bring a strap for your sunglasses if you want to wear them in the pool.
If you’re used to a traditional AI hotel with nightly entertainment then you might be a little disappointed. Portaventura is your entertainment here, and the evening entertainment in the park is excellent. There were evening mini discos and shows with Woody the Woodpecker, 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 this Portaventura hotel over the other on-site hotels available. It took around 15 minutes to walk from our hotel room to the theme park entrance.
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 head 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 B&B or half board options. The food in the hotel was good, and there were loads of options suitable for the kids and for our more refined 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 one main buffet restaurant in the hotel which you could eat in with your full board booking.
Although the dinner menus did get a bit ‘samey’ 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.
What we did like about the full board offering here was that if we didn’t want to eat in our hotel (because we were spending the day in the theme park) then we could visit hotel reception and ask for theme park meal vouchers in lieu of eating in the hotel buffet.
You’re given a value of €20 per adult and €9.50 per child which you can either use to 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 hotels in the theme parks, which we loved.
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. 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 was the english speaking TV channels. There were plenty of options for the kids, including the Disney Channel. Not that we spent a lot of our holiday watching the TV, but it meant the boys had something to watch and somewhere to unwind while I was getting ready for dinner!
I know this hotel gets very mixed reviews (we read so many of these before we booked) but I think a lot of the problems come from people expecting an all-inclusive traditional hotel experience. That’s simply not what this hotel has to offer! But if you think of it as a theme park hotel you’ll be very pleasantly surprised. We had a great experience, and it’s somewhere we would be happy to go back to.
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