We have just returned from a 5 night stay here.
We are seasoned Alvor visitors, and visit several times a year. We have not stayed here before, usually choosing South Beach of late, and prior to this Alvor Park.

We found the reception staff, to be friendly enough but not in the same league as the other two hotels. We had a Superior Sea View room which was very nice, although a touch smaller than we are used to.

Breakfast was ok, but our real problem came when we wanted to spend time around the pool. There were plenty of sunbeds available, however most of them were covered in bird mess, and during our entire stay we saw noone attempt to clean them.

We were unlucky enough to have a room in amongst a large group of golfers, who frequently returned well into the early hours shouting to each other and talking very loudly in the corridor outside our room, affording no courtesy whatsoever.

Both these issues may seem trivial, but to us, these are issues a hotel of this standard should be dealing with.

We would stay again, if nowhere else was available, however we have stayed several time at Alvor South Beach and cant rate it highly enough.

We booked the Praia for a short break for a family group. We booked 3 rooms directly with pestana central booking a number of months before our trip in March. A week before our departure we were emailed to say that no twin room was available beside our other 2 reserved rooms. We found this odd as we had booked so far in advance. The email offered an upgraded twin but wanted us to pay an upgraded price!! We did not accept this and requested any twin at our original price. The result of this was that we had 2 rooms on 5th floor and 1 on 2nd floor.
I stayed in the 2nd floor room which was a twin with a sea view. We feel we received an upgraded room as we had paid for garden view. This room was lovely, it had a wooden floor, nice white furniture and a balcony with a day bed and a table and 2 chairs. We also had a larger bathroom with a separate shower cubicle which is so much better than an over bath shower. Only one niggle about this room - the bathroom wallpaper was peeling badly, I could put my whole hand behind it. My other family members were on the 5th floor and had rooms which were not quite as nice. They had very unappealing carpet and over bath showers. They also had less space and much smaller balconies. They were kept awake at night by a loud noise at the front of the hotel which sounded like a frog chorus, don’t know what it actually was. This was mentioned but reception staff didn’t seem bothered.
The service is patchy and speaking to reception does not seem to have any impact. We purposely leave a card in the slot in our room when we go out to dinner, this charges our kindles so that we can read at night. On our first 2 nights we returned to find the card removed entirely. We had to go to reception to get the card back. We explained why we left the card in place but the same thing happened the next night.
My aunt had to ask for an iron and ironing board 5 times before actually receiving it. She was then told she could have it for an hour and it would be picked up however it wasn’t picked up for a full day.
We were given an almond liqueur on arrival which was a lovely gesture however the glasses sat in one of our rooms for 2 days before they were removed.
The pool bar/snack area is very pricey and there are cheaper and tastier options nearby. A sandwich is around €14, a creme croissant €5 and a coke is €4. The chips are nice and prob the most reasonable and edible option. There are numerous places to eat along the beach boardwalk and in the town of alvor so I wouldn’t eat in the hotel unless you really can’t leave. By contrast a nicer creme croissant freshly baked in the local shop is 69 cents and a coke in any cafe restaurant around €2. The staff who work at the pool bar are nice and will bring drinks to your sun lounger if you do choose to buy them.
The breakfast buffet is very busy and tables are hard to get. The staff are quite disorganised and there isn’t a coherent system. The staff are supposed to take a coffee/tea order when you are seated and bring this to the table. We had breakfast 5 times and an order was taken once, on the other 4 mornings we had to find someone and ask for drinks. Also the drinks tend to be tepid. I think they should have self service tea and coffee in the buffet to solve these issue. The cold drinks are on the buffet but the glasses provided are the size of shot glasses so you have to go back 10 times to get a reasonable amount of orange juice. The food is average. Omelettes are good as they are made to order as are pancakes/waffles. The croissants are truly terrible. Having bought croissants in the local shops there is just no comparison in quality. If breakfast is included in your price then I am sure u will find something but it is most definitely not worth the €16 you would pay for it as an extra.
The swimming pool was freezing so we didn’t venture in further than the knee but it is March.
I have 2 bug bears i leave in reviews for nearly every hotel and this one was no different. The hairdryer is is the bathroom and has a push button to keep it on. How can anyone else use the bathroom if you are in there drying your hair? Drying your hair doesn’t need to be done in the bathroom. I have arthritis in my fingers and having to hold the button constantly is painful. Meaning I tie up the bathroom even longer while I dry my hair in a stop start manner.
The towels were replaced everyday but there weren’t enough of them. Maybe this is a female thing but a hand towel will not go around your head so I ended up with my bath towel round my head and using a hand towel to dry myself, 2 bath towels each would be so great.
Towels for the sun loungers were plentiful once we found out that they were available from the indoor pool.
There were plenty of sunloungers and parasols for everyone however not sure this would be the same in summer. A lot of golfers were staying at the same time as us who were out all day.
It was my birthday during our stay and a nice choc cake was left in our room which we thought was a nice touch. Also as it was Easter we were left a bottle of port and some truffles in each room which was also nice.
We had been given a €40 voucher by a staff member to use towards lunch. We ordered lunch and when we tried to use the voucher upon checkout to pay for the lunch we were told this was not allowed as we had booked our rooms during the sale. It took some discussion to sort this out but the receptionist was very nice while sorted the issue.
This hotel is supposed to be the 5 star jewel in pestanas algarve chain. However I have stayed in both the dom joao II and the south beach. In my opinion the standard rooms in Dom joao are nicer, only our sea view room was comparable. The south beach is defiantly the nicest hotel by far but sadly closes for the winter.

I had a fantastic time. Share a room with a close friend. We walked, spent time n the gym and sauna. Our 2nd spa break at this hotel. Paolo and his time were very accommodating. Other hotel guest very friendly. Would recommend this hotel and the local amenities. Well done Paolo and your team