Name: Hotel Riu Palace Santa Maria
Address: Cabocan Lote E2, Santa Maria, Santa Maria, Santa Maria, Santa Maria, 32, Cape Verde
Rating: 9

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24-hour reception

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Smoke-free property

Newspapers

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Garden

Terrace

All Spaces Non-Smoking (public and private)

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Wheelchair Accessible

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Breakfast

Cafe

Restaurant

Meals

Free Wi-Fi

Internet

Car rental

Transfer

Multi-language staff

Languages Spoken

Sun Deck

Recreation

Parking nearby

Parking

Pool facilities

Pool and beach

Conference Hall

Business

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Sports

Beauty and wellness

Children's playground

Children swimming pool

Kids

Pets Not Allowed

Pets

Temperature control for staff

Personal protection equipment for staff

Extra decontamination measures

Temperature control for guests

Personal protection equipment for guests

Additional measures against COVID-19

Health and Safety Measures

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At the hotel

Amilcar Cabral International Airport

Rabil Airport

Hotel Riu Palace Santa Maria

Santa Maria

Just returned from a week's stay at the RIU Santa Maria. Overall, the hotel is huge, clean and the staff are so helpful. However, we found the evening meals to be stressful and overwhelming. There are so many people going through a relatively small restaurant making it so busy, sometimes you couldn't get to the food. We went the Steakhouse and we found this to be OK, didn't think there was much choice for the starters and desserts. We had one night here we thought the food on offer was poor. We enjoyed our week away but for the reasons above we wouldn't come back to this hotel. Management really need to look at the logistics of the restaurant. The staff did their best, they are told what to do by the powers that be. Its a shame really as the hotel is lovley!

Nice Hotel but would not return.

We found the hotel Riu Palace an excellent hotel in a great location. The hotel is squeaky clean, rooms modern and spacious with a lovely bathroom. The pools are out of this world. The water park is great to have a trip to daily with the kids. The beach is lovely and very vast. The hotel staff were very polite and made a fuss of our wee boy daily. The food was excellent, we only ate fish but the options were endless. Thank you hotel Riu Palace for a great first holiday for our wee boy. 

Great first time in Cape Verde

A lovely place to stay . Beautiful location  with surrounding neat and tidy environment, Easy and accessible for disabled ;Gym and Spa and other fitness activities available for visitors. Beach party well monitored 

We booked to celebrate wedding anniversary and hotel kindly left bottle of prosecco in the room.  Staff, all very helpful, hardworking and courteous. The room, we booked standard room and it was very spacious, clean and comfortable. Excellent bathroom, large shower. Minibar topped up every day as we did use the optics. Facilities, everything you could want, beach towels good and plenty of sun beds both round the pool and on the beach. Only minor concern was the gym, too small and outdated for a 5 star hotel of this size and you have to book 3 days out so cannot get in until half way through holiday. Food, we could not find a fault. The buffet has something for everybody and quality is excellent, staff work really hard to keep tables clean and available. We also ate at Fusion which was great. Entertainment, we did not watch every night but thoroughly enjoyed neon party at next door hotel and the Abba night was also class.
Overall we enjoyed it so much we have booked again for Summer holidays but went for sea view room this time to enjoy beautiful sunset.

Fantastic celebration

Party of 18 stayed at this hotel. Absolutely fantastic. Staff work incredibly hard. Nothing too much trouble. White night superb in sister hotel. Food of a good standard and plentiful drinks. Would highly recommend this hotel. 

Cape Verde Capers

New, well maintained hotel but with limited activities beyond it. 

Room

Spotless and with an excellent shower + beds were very comfortable 5/5.
Guests though need to be told to keep their voices down when using the corridor as it could be noisy. -1.

Food and drink
Being a large hotel means there was always something edible in the buffet. There were some good dishes (sea food) but also a lot of AI staple fare - pizza and chips. Sweets were sweet but never saw a Portuguese custard tart/nata. Only tried one reserved restaurant- Crystal - which was disappointing- over - ambitious in what they were trying to do and would have been better as an adult only option. Compared to reviews in October we found no health issues with the food. Just ate and drank too much

Pools - well maintained and good to have easy access to the beach.

Entertainment - usual AI song and dance routines. Full marks for the enthusiasm of the  animation team but the best musicians were local singers + a Senegalese group of drummers - yet they had on average an auidence of about 15 prople per night. There should be more of this and on a better stage. Cape Verde has a great musical heritage and deserves supporting - at least there was access to local TV in the bedroom.

Activities  site-seeing is limited. The hotel is near santa maria  (25 min walk) which is worth visiting - quiet and some nice beach bars. One tour takes you to salt pans to the north east though santa Maria has its own salt industry in walking distance from the town.

Hotel

Staff in all areas were really friendly and helpful - and were the main reason why we enjoyed our stay.

Although close to Senegal this island and country has culturally more in common with Brazil. The architecture of the hotel, the African images around the hotel and many items in the shop seemed out of place and reminded me more of main land africa - you are not going to see herds of elephants here.

As the hotel is so large it would be nice if there were some adult only facilities. Kiddies seemed to have the run of the hotel.

Great for a week and have learnt more about Cape Verde. Friendly people and great local music.

Great for a week's holiday

Upon arriving we queued up to check in. The queue was quite long due to so many people arriving at the same time but drinks were being offered to those queuing. The actual check in was pretty quick as we had already pre filled the forms. We were in block 2 top floor. There are no lifts so we had to carry our cases up which wasn't a problem for us. The room was lovely, clean, modern and spacious. We had a small balcony which overlooked a derelict building site and you could partially see the sea. 
We went to use the gym the following morning but was told that you need to book in so be aware of that if you want to use it. We had breakfast in the main restaurant. The staff in there were lovely, especially a gentleman named Jailson. He really went the extra mile for us and made us feel so welcomed. The coffee place in the main reception part made the best lattes! We managed to book into 2 out of the 3 Al la carte restaurants which were the Japanese and steak. Both were nice and again the staff were so pleasant. 
The place is huge and it took about 5-10mins to walk to the beach. There were plenty of sunbeds available. The beach was gorgeous. However as soon as you lay your head down, you will have someone approach you selling something. We were polite and just stated that we had no money and they left us alone. It's a shame that there isn't a beach hut providing drinks as it's a bit of a walk back to get more. 

We booked our excursions through Tui however if we were to go again, we would book with the locals. The trips were worth doing and broke the week up. 

The weather was good in September, we had rain and thunder on one of the nights but other than that, it was hot and slightly windy. You will be glad of the wind to cool things down. The only main issue we had was the flies. There were tonnes of them crawling all over the food which hadn't been covered. We only ate food which had been covered but we seen lots of people eating food which had flies crawling all over it. The biscuits at the coffee place were in enclosed shelves but the staff left the doors open so they were crawling with flies so unfortunately we could not try out the biscuits with our drinks. We also seen cockroaches but thankfully not in our room. I did see one crawl under someone's door but mainly they were on the pathways outside. 

The entertainment was ok; there was bingo, karaoke, tribute acts and live music. The entertainment area was huge and there were no toilets facilities there which meant a walk back to the reception area. 

Overall we had a great time and would go back again. I think I would go a different time of year as September is the rainy season and this is what brings the large amount of flies.

Beautiful hotel on a stunning beach

We've stayed at many Riu Hotels in different countries, this Hotel is top. The food can not be beaten, every day too much choice for breakfast, wanted to keep eating. A very large complex with so much to choose with different bars and eating places. Staff are all so helpful and frienly.

Fantastic Hotel

Stayed here for a week in January to celebrate my husband’s 50th birthday. We had a one bedroom family room. 

The hotel looks very nice and has good facilities. I have never stayed in a Riu Palace before and had high expectations but was a little disappointed overall. 

Food 3/5
Quite difficult to book in the a la carte restaurants. Managed to book 2 of them - steak and Italian. My surf and turf was probably the best meal I had during the week. 
Buffet has a lot of choice but nothing was particularly tasty or great. The buffets are so busy and its hard to find tables. Not a very relaxing experience. 

Bars 3/5
Cocktails are pre made and not great at all. Espresso martini and margaritas seemed to be the only ones fully made fresh and were much better. 
The kids were disappointed that they could only get two flavours of slushes as they were all all boozy. Don’t know why they don’t make them without alcohol and just add it after.

Spa5/5
Really reasonable prices and a good service

Riu Art 5/5
This was fantastic. Lenni helped my kids paint lovely canvases which are a nice momento of our trip.

Riu Fit 5/5
Did the suspension class. Wow my abs were sore for the remainder if the holiday but it was good. They also did yoga. 
Didn’t try the gym as you had to prebook and I don’t want to be on a timetable on holiday. 

The beach is gorgeous but unfortunately its so windy you get sand blasted! Not the hotel’s fault I know but something to be aware of. 

Rooms 3/5
Rooms were ok, quite basic really. We kept getting ants and cockroaches. We did report it and got some spray which helped a bit. 
Optics and minibar were good.

Reception 3/5
Ordered and paid for a cake for my husband’s birthday. Ordered red velvet cake with ‘Happy 50th’. A chocolate cake with ‘Happy 40th’ turned up! Ha ha! I just felt sorry for the other room they mixed us up with lol!!!

Pools and Waterpark 4/5
Pools slightly heated to take the edge off and ok once you got used to it. Water park slides are extremely fast so be prepared! 

Overall it was a nice break for a week but I won’t be rushing back. For what we paid at that time of year we could have gone to Jamaica or Mexico from the UK. Sal is a nice island and we did a day trip to sightsee plus the zipline. I would prefer to stay in an apartment if I went again to experience local restaurants etc.

January holiday for 50th birthday

this is the best hotel I have ever stayed in. The hotel is so clean and tidy, the staff working constantly to keep it that way. The food choice was excellent, even a fussy eater would find something to their liking. The entertainment was first class, something to meet everyone`s needs, Brilliant stage shows, live music, karaoke and for the more relaxing piano bar. The entertainment staff worked extremely hard morning to night. The pool areas were very clean and tidy and never overcrowded, and never noisy a lovely place to relax. The drinks choice was excellent and the waiters were always around to take and deliver your orders. Using the Riu app made it easy to order extra drinks for the room fridge, book reservations for the restaurants etc. The rooms were very clean and tidy, the maids doing a brilliant job every day. The beach area was very clean and tidy, but the touts on the beach could be a bit of a pain. The sea is very powerful and in my opinion only the strongest of swimmers should venture in. We didn`t` do any trips not go out of the hotel, as everything we needed was right there. We have now been twice to this hotel and wouldn`t hesitate in going again. Thank you Riu Palace for a fantastic holiday

Hotel Riu Palace Santa Maria

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