My husband and I booked this hotel for one week after Christmas. We enjoyed the holiday and the weather was perfect all week. The hotel was good but not up to usual Riu hotel standards. We had been to the Hotel Funama in Cape Verde in September (which was excellent) and there was no comparison whatsoever with this hotel which is over 20 years old and it certainly shows in the appearance and decor. We had a room in the main block at a supplement rather than stay in the annex. The rooms are adequate with a nice beach/pool view from the balcony. The food was fairly good, plenty of choice and lots of drinks beer, soft drinks and wine etc available on tap in the restaurant. All food is buffet no waiter service..

New Years eve was excellent they put on a massive buffet and fireworks on the beach at midnight.

The main problem here is that the English are a minority with the majority of people being mainly German and european. There seemed to be very few English.

This our second visit to this hotel, but were very dissappointed this time to be allocated room in annex. Annex walkways very badly need repairing or retiling, some areas extremely dangerous for the elderly and they were in the majority during our two weeks. The area (which was a main walkway) behind the Mandarin restaurant was disgusting, stained flooring and more broken tiles. The paintwork on all the outside areas of the annex buildings is flaking off and the paintwork in the bar by the swimming pool was rusting and in bad need of maintenance. There is a constant smell of sewerage and tankers can be seen emptying the underground tanks almost every day. Considering the size of the hotel and annex the food was reasonably good. There was a good selection of salads and although the main courses were not particularly hot, there was a microwave oven in the restaurant. The entertainment was typical of this type of hotel, but the bar areas inside were non smoking which was wonderful and made sitting drinking inside a pleasure. It is a pity that this hotel complex has been allowed to detereorate to such an extent as it does not represent Riu usual high standards. The beach is beautiful and the local town, a bus or taxi ride away. We made the most of our stay, but will not be returning.

My wife and I took four daughters, three partners, and eleven grandchildren, to the Riu Oliva to celebrate my wife's 70th birthday. We'd give it full marks in every way. It is brilliantly managed. It is the perfect place for families with children, and there are lots of these even babies. So it isn't the place for a quiet holiday as a couple.

The hotel is situated on a very wide beach of very fine golden sand.
The slope into the sea is quite gradual, meaning one is not out of one's depth quickly. It also has two large heated pools.

The rooms may not be luxury, but they have everything one could want and are spotless, as are all the facilities and grounds. We stayed in the annex, which unlike the main hotel is not high rise. It has it's own pool and dining room, and these are if anything nicer than the main hotel, which however is a very short walk away.

We were all-inclusive. This really means what it says, and drinks including local alcholic are available all day long, as are snacks. The kids especially loved being able to get a piece of pizza or ice cream, hot chololate or slushies all day long, and there were other choices too.

The meals were from a buffet of a very high standard, with masses of choice. To give an idea of this I mention that there were about five different types of olive oil if one wanted to dress ones own salad. Many things were being cooked in sight and fresh and hot.

The staff at reception were always very courteous and helpful. Nothing seemed too much trouble. They even provided a private place for us to celebrate my wife's 70th and an overhead projector so her life story could be shown on the big screen!

It was warm and sunny most of the time too.

What more could one want?

All in all, full marks and highly recommended for a family holiday.

I visited this hotel with my boyfriend in November; the location of this hotel is fantastic for people who don’t like to be directly in the centre of the local town. it was situated just at the edge of the town (about 5/10 min bus journey but 1hr 30Mins walk) seems very far but trust me its not to far. Both myself and boyfriend are young (18&28) and like a bit of nightlife but don’t like to much of it, it was great if we wanted to go into the town for a more lively evening and it didn’t cost to much to get into the local town (€6 in a taxi and €1.10 on the bus). Taxis are very easy to get here, you will see loads of white cars parked up outside the hotel grounds and in the town centres, the bus stop is a 5 min walk from the hotel and the bus comes every 30mins to take you into Corrallajo.
Inside this hotel is nice, very nice rooms with a balcony in the main building, apartments at the side of the hotel look great too, and heard from a few Brits that they were very big and spacious with a comfy sofa in the front room.
Maid service every morning between 8 and 3, rooms are kept clean and neat by the maids and they are very polite.
Food in this hotel is lovely, repetitive but lovely, breakfast is served from about 8am they have a range of foods, full English breakfasts, fruit, quasants, breads ect….. I’m not sure what is served at lunch as we never visited during this time, we only ever used the snack bar, this has chips, pizza, burgers, garlic breads, chicken nuggets and salad, they also have different ice creams available at the snack bar. The snack bar is located down on the same level as the pool. Evening meal is great too; they have one side of the restaurant serving pizzas, pastas, garlic bread all Italian style foods (well what we call Italian). The other side has chips, crochets,,,,which are absolutely lovely, only got to have once tho and they never had again before I come home, all sorts of stews are also in this section, they also have fresh fish.
The “private beach” this hotel has isn’t very good, its literally an area with loungers on with sand on the floor, we didn’t use this much as these are the sun loungers that are reserved first thing by the Germans. We did manage to get 2 loungers right next to the pool on 2 different days but these were reserved first thing when we went down for breakfast (aprox 8am).
This beach is great, around this time of year there are not to many people on the beach, loungers are also easy to grab but there is a charge and we decided to just take our towels on the beach and lie on the floor. The views on this beach are absolutely gorgeous.
It states in the brochures that the pool in this hotel is suposed to be heated in the winter, however this wasnt the case while we were there, my boyfriend decided that the easiest way to get intothe pool was to run and jump in to save the struggle of it feeling cold on the body. I did participate in the water arobics in the morning this was great fun but alot of the time they give the information out in German, I know a few bits of german from school so I just tried to make out what they were saying and watching other people at what they were doing. Overall i think this hotel was very clean and staff very friendly, we did have a problem when we arrive regarding a sea view (which we had been told we had reserved) and the staff ensured our problem was delt with as soon as we arrived. If you dont like germans DONT go to this hotel!!! We did find it a struggle as they like to stare but we got throught it.