Riu Chiclana Club Hotel

What can I say, Riu hotels are first class. I work in the holiday business and I am based in Southern Spain. I drove from my home in Malaga to Cadiz to the Riu Chiclana which is 2 hours away. Excellent all inclusive hotel on a fabulous unspoilt beach not for young and lively as its very quiet but ace for families. Plenty of entertainment, kids club etc and the food is out of this world but then Riu hotels have an excellent reputation anyway for food. My kids are 10 and 6 and my husband is spanish and works in the hotel business and he was well impressed and the kids want to live there! Highly recommended.

Me and my husband have just literally came back from a week holiday in this resort. We found it extremely relaxing, all the staffs were extremelly friendly and the food extremelly delicious, overall we had a great time just sitting by the pool, getting involved in daytime entertainment and going for a walk in the beach. Alright, so the hotel might have 52 blocks and if you are allocated a room that might seem to be miles away from the main block, where you can find the hotel reception, main restaurants and bars, don't worry, it might seem quite far away at first but after the 1st day you won't even notice and, like us, might actually think that it was actually quite a good idea after a heavy meal. The rooms are exactly as shown on their website, very comfortable and clean. The main restaurant is massive and there is enough choice to cater for the different nationalities, but pork is pretty much on every meal. The beach is a must to visit, although it can get really windy. Some of the evening entertainment shows are worth to see like the flamenco dance, and the entertainment team works really hard day and night to keep everyone entertain. The only thing that we regret is not going for a fortnight so that we could have gone to the day trips to Seville and Gibraltar.

I have just returned from a week in the Riu Chiclana Club Hotel. I went with my husband and my parents. Firstly I must say that the hotel itself is lovely, and definitely warrants 4 stars. The rooms are spacious and comfortable and very clean and we found the staff to be helpful, polite and happy. The food was good especially when you consider the number of people the hotel has to cater for. We booked direct with the hotel and arranged our own flights. We paid about £200 each for a week all inclusive and our flights with Iberian were £125 each direct from Heathrow to Seville. We hired a car from Crown Car Hire and they were excellent value as well. All in all we had a very reasonably priced holiday especially when you compare it to the prices charged by the only English Tour Operator that goes there. The down sides, in my opinion were: At other Riu hotels I have been to, the theme restaurants that you have to book a table in are waiter service. In this hotel the two theme restaurants were no different from the main buffet restaurant. Secondly, if you don't want to be surrounded by small children then this hotel is not the place for you. We deliberately went in June as we hoped we would avoid school holidays, but Spanish and German schools must have very different holidays to the UK schools. I would say that 80% of the people staying at the hotel had a child with them and the noise in the dining room was incredible. And it made no difference what time you ate - the children were there running around and making noise. I did feel that if the parents couldn't be bothered to make their children sit down at the table and eat properly then the hotel management should have pointed out that small children running around in a restaurant is not only unacceptable but very dangerous. Had there been an adult only restaurant this would have been perfect. Thirdly, don't believe the notices about not reserving sun beds - despite the size of the pool area and the number of sun beds - still they are being reserved and they run out quite quickly. My husband and I watched two young couples who every day reserved themselves four sunbeds, they spent about half an hour on them and then disappeared for the rest of the day, still leaving their towels on them, and returning at about 5pm. This was happening all the time but these four in particular stood out as they had the same beds each day and did exactly the same thing. The beach. This is truly lovely but the hotel is quite high above the beach and the walk down is some distance, especially when you have two elderly people with you. The hotel is really out in the sticks so if you don't have a car you would have to stay in the hotel all the time, although there is a bus stop outside. We didn't use the bus as we had a car. I really don't want this review to sound as if we didn't enjoy our holiday because we did. I would probably go back there again, just for the fact that the area hasn't been spoiled by mass tourism and its not full of beer swilling lager louts. One thing that stands out is the cleanliness of the hotel and all the public areas. The gardens are immaculate and everything it kept so tidy. One of the other reviews I read said that the staff wouldn't speak English. We didn't have a problem at all. We did attempt to converse in spanish, albeit very poor, and the staff seemed to appreciate the effort and help us as well, but on the whole they spoke to us in English. The entertainment staff really worked hard and made a real effort to put on good shows.

We (Myself & my partner) got a great deal for this hotel, £200 each for a week, and for that price this is a very good hotel. This hotel warrants the 4*'s it has, which is refreshing! In Greece they seem to give a hotel 4*'s if it has a working toilet! There is room for improvement in terms of the food, because after about four days it begins to get very repititive, and there is only so much pork you can eat! The animation team are excellent and the hotel is run very well. We had a great time here, but I would only recommend it for a long weekend due to the high level of repitition of the food. It is also important to remember that you will be expected to try and speak Spanish. We were aware of this and did our best. Most of the staff were happy to help us with our attempts at Spanish, but some were impatient, and this feels a little frustrating when you see the Germans making no effort to speak spanish and the staff gladly responding to them in German (Hotel caters for Spanish and Germans mainly). It would be nice if the Germans were also expected to make an effort with Spanish!

An absolutely superb hotel for families. However, as a couple looking for a peaceful break, our holiday was probably only saved by us avoiding the central areas. We escaped to appreciate the lovely sand dunes and beach where we walked for miles. The hotel was noisy and we were regularly disturbed during the night, especially from Friday to Sunday when there seemed to be an invasion of Spanish weekenders. You couldn't work out whether the owners of the high-heeled shoes were through the wall or upstairs -don't know whether it would have helped to change rooms as the "click-clicking" noise carried through the buildings. Everything else was near top class, but to enjoy the sand dunes and beach, next time we'd have to choose another hotel on this lovely Costa de la Luz.

Food, rooms, beach, swimming pools, entertainers, employees, breakfast... I only can say 5 stars.

Best all round hotel I have stay in. The hotel has all different nationalities there which is good to see. The food is excellent with lots of choice. The pools are fantastic with the beach right outside the gate, big clean beach lots of space, your own plot of land! The entewrtainment is also fantastic, I have been here twice now and would go back again.

This hotel is very popular with spanish families and is very busy and very noisy. Probably ideal if you have young children but definitely not if you are a couple looking for relaxation and p and q. Pool areas noisy and crowded, restaurants frantic and noisy. Hotel standards good, bar service excellent, all inclusive excellent.Location nothing within walking distance (shop a half hour walk away). Loved the area and will definitely go back but to a different hotel.

Had read reviews and stayed at a previous riu AI in Dominican Republic but was still very impressed with this hotel. A beautiful location above a beautiful beach. Rooms excellent, could not fault at all and at least as good as 5 star starwood rooms. Room maid service discreet and excellent. Hotel spotlessly clean, probably the cleanest hotel we have ever stayed in. Lots of rooms, interesting layout of hotel, lots of excellent facilities, wonderful pools, plenty of sunloungers. Bar service excellent and external entertainers such as flamenco, acrobat and a platters band superb. However own riu shows on other nights not very professional but didn't mind as wonderful location and warm evenings meant walks around the hotel grounds were very pleasant. Bus stop outside hotel circles chiclana. Lots of lovely small shops in chiclana itself all reached with 1 euro fare. Only thing which we minded was that some Germans were very rude and the fact that the hotel staff constantly thought we were German as there were so few British (although there were a few Americans which we really appreciated!). Other than that hotel staff wonderful, reception superb, wonderful welcome and dining room and food superb and varied, although we prefered usual buffet to alternative dining. What more can I say!

This hotel is one of the BEST i have ever been to over Europe. The RIU brand really does itself justice here. All Inslusive option was excellent, with 3 resturants. (The Andlucian is the best!) Rooms were fab, with 'towel art' of birds and swans, with clean and tidy rooms. Try taking the local bus to Chiclana for a spanish town then from their if you feel even adventours, buses to Cadiz and all over Spain can be found! Try to learn a few spanish phrases as the main clintelle on the Costa de la Luz is Spainards then Germans, with English 3rd, even thought the friendly staff speak English (muttered.) Well worth a vist, just a shame that for some reason First Choice (and Thomson) have dropped it! You can still book with them on their website and fly into Jerez, NOT MALAGA OR FARO - AGES AWAY!!!!