Clubhotel Riu Bellevue Park Reviews

Stayed for 2 weeks July/Aug 08 on an all inclusive basis - great hotel, rooms, food, drink, cleanliness, facilities all as you would expect from a 4* hotel. All staff very helpful. Excellent daytime entertainment programme however some work needed on evening entertainment, whilst an enthusiastic anaimation team there needs to be some professional input for the evening shows probably buying external entertainers to add quality and variety.

Stayed here in January 2008 with three female friends for my 40th birthday. We were made a fuss of from the minute we arrived, with the bar staff making us special birthday cocktails, the restraunt staff making extra special displays with the fruit and vegetables and even a birthday cake complete with candles and rose petals sprinkled on the table!!! The entertainment team were great fun and we had such a giggle with them. We paid for some treatments in the spa which were out of this world.This was the first time I had been abroad without family so was a little sceptical but I did not need to worry, the staff at the hotel were brilliant and on the one occasion I got a little upset, one of the entertainment team came over and gave me a hug to console me, then got me up to dance to cheer me up! We did nothing but laugh for the whole week we were there and enjoyed it so much we hope to go back next year.

This is a Riu Hotel, and is therefore always going to be of a very high standard. We were not disappointed. We had 4 adults ranging between 34 and 50, and 2 children aged 11. This is an excellant hotel, with so much to offer. The food, rooms, Reception area, and grounds of the hotel are of a very high standard. The entertainment staff, especially Masinga, did everything to keep you happy. Sure the shows were very amateurish, but that was a large part of their charm. Butlins have been getting away with it for years!

The tips I will give will help you get more out of your stay. First is the rooms. You will be offered a ";sea view"; for a supplement from your tour operator. Don't pay, all rooms have a sea view. When you get to your room, it could be facing out from the side of the hotel. The better rooms face the pool and sea, but seem to be given in preference to other nationalities. A quick complaint at Reception by us and 3 other families got us moved.

The second tip is about loungers. Some nations seem to put towels on chairs at the crack of dawn, despite hotel notices. The way around this, is to ask one of the 2 guys doing chairs at the pool, or Fatty who does the chairs on the beach, to reserve you the number required and location, for the next day. We tipped 3 Dinar(about £1.20) for 5 chairs, and they were over the moon ! No getting up at 6am to get loungers!

The next tip concerns buying leather jackets. Many shops and markets will try to sell you jackets for about £90.00 after haggling. I went up to the main road, went 200 yards to the left, and there is a Leather Factory. You can design any jacket, pick the best quality material, and get it made to measure in 24 hours for £85.00.

The port is fun for a night or two, and the fountains are brilliant in the dark. It is only 4 dinar each way in a taxi. Look for German bars for a drink, otherwise you will get beers etc without alchohol. This is a Muslim country afterall.

We have no hesitation in recommending this hotel! It was re-furbished just over a year ago, is in excellent condition and is kept spotlessly clean. The accommodation, food and service is much nearer a five star (apart from no room service) than its official four star rating. All the staff are friendly and keen to help. They really seem to enjoy their work. The rooms are a reasonable size with loads of cupboards and drawers, free security box, TV and small balcony. We had a sea view which we thought was well worth the extra. There are only two English speaking TV channels - BBC World and CNN. The foreign channels don't include sports so unfortunately you can't even just watch.

You may think that as the Thomson brochure says ";Exclusive to Thomson Group customers in the UK"; that all guests would be British - they were mostly German followed by French speaking (French and Belgian), Dutch speaking (Dutch and Belgian), English speaking and Russian speaking. However this did not detract from our enjoyment as they were all very pleasant and NOT the stereo-typical loud, rude, refuse-to-queue types.

The main restaurant serves a wide variety of good quality hot and cold food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It does not panda to British tastes (bacon is available at breakfast only every third day, though chips are available every lunch and dinner time), but the variety is so good that if you can't find something you like at every meal then you shouldn't holiday outside GB. The poolside restaurant and bar serves drinks from about 10am to 5pm, snacks for almost as long and a similar lunchtime menu to the main restaurant. Hot, cold and alcoholic drinks are available in the hotel from 10am to (I think) midnight.

As with most hotels they say you must not reserve sun-beds but it always happens because many people like particular places. Unless you are very particular in where you want to lay you can get sun-beds around the pool at any time, I don't know about the beach as we never tried to get sun-beds there. The only gripe I have is the poolside towel service - limited supplies of fresh towels arrive intermittently several times throughout the day. When you arrive on the first day you may be without pool towels for an hour or two. Many people find it better to keep their towels at the end of each day and exchange them the next day when one of the fresh supplies arrives. The towels are not very large either. Despite it being May, the pool and sea were both quite cold.

The daytime entertainment, organised by the amusing and hard working Animation Team, is excellent. The evening entertainment is a matter of taste, we found it very mediocre, some are professional acts and some are provided by the Animation Team (the latter often doing a better job than the professional acts).

Trips - we don't normally go on tours but succumbed to the Friday evening show in Sousse, put on by the Thomson reps and a professional cross-dressing trio. The show was good but we did not think it was good value at £18 and a rip-off if you go for the £30 option.

Monastir airport is surprisingly good. On arrival the passport control only took 5 to 10 minutes and by the time we arrived at the luggage carousel our cases were starting to appear. On departure we found Monastir has a good Duty Free shop where everything is priced in Euros but you can pay in £ or Euros. At passport control we were asked if we had any Dinas and I owned up to having 3, the language barrier made it difficult to be sure but I got the impression he was suggesting I should give them to him for a coffee. A few steps further on the passports were re-checked by another official and the same question asked with the same implications of discarding the coins in his direction. I kept the coins and was able to use them in the café (which for an airport was very reasonably priced). The Thomson plane was clean and in good condition (possibly quite new) with reasonable leg room (I'm 6'2";). The cabin crew provided excellent service but I was not very impressed with having to pay £1 for a glass of orange juice poured from a litre carton that probably cost them no more than 30p.

We stayed at the Riu Bellevue Park hotel which is simply the last hotel going North along the main road from the resort centre of Port El Kantaoui. This hotel used to be owned by Iberotel but it was sold to Riu and refurbished. The first impression you get is just how posh, grand, clean and spacious it looks. This is a 4 star hotel and the lounge/reception area is huge and looks very classy. The ceilings are very high, there is lots of marble and the place looks spotless. This hotel has 387 rooms and is built on 4 storeys which form a U shape facing the beach and overlooking the outdoor swimming pool. Our room looked the other way, North towards the houses and we could see the sea from our balcony. Some people do not like Port El Kantaoui because they claim it is a tourist ghetto, I disagree with them and I think the resort is gorgeous. From our room we had the best of both worlds, the affluence of the hotel and the real life of local people housed on the edge of the resort. Our room had twin beds which were firm, there was plenty of storage space, a free safe deposit box and the bath had a shower fitted above it. The floor was tiled and the room was very clean. There are only 2 English speaking channels on the television, CNN and BBC World .

You might think this was a strange time of year to go on holiday to Tunisia but the weather was good with daytime temperatures reaching 20 to 22C. This is not to everyone's liking and I guess that the hotel was two thirds full. It means that you can stroll around in shirt sleeves and not break out into a sweat. Swimming in the outdoor pool or the sea is a challenge - you swim rather than bathe to cool off! The sea is clean and the beach is sandy. The outdoor pool was I guess 25m by 12m and went from ankle deep to 1.8m which is a little over my head. I went in twice and it was cold but OK, you had to want to swim to go into the pool. Pool towels were free and easily obtained from the pool guy who was very attentive. This saves on your luggage as we were restricted to 20kg per person, which is a problem for women. The indoor pool was heated and maybe 5m by 5m in size and I could put both feet down anywhere.

Being an all-inclusive hotel the food is a self service buffet affair, choose a table and help yourself to whatever you want to eat and drink. In the evening there is 2 sittings and your table is allocated for the length of your stay. The breakfast was good and I particularly liked the hot Tunisian/Arab flatbread. There was even bacon available for the infidels. At lunch there was always hot and cold food, salads, pizza and pasta. At evening meal there was hot and cold food plus a Tunisian speciality hot food counter. For drinks you helped yourself to fruit juice, pop, Celtia beer or wine. I thoroughly enjoyed all my meals and it was to my taste, all you would expect from a Middle Eastern menu.

I was surprised at just how clean and spotless all the public toilets within the hotel complex were. They were first class and make UK pubs and restaurant toilets look like those of a third world country.

The entertainment is provided mainly by the animation team in a large indoor hall with it's own bar. The animation team worked very well together and were funny. All the entertainment was done in 3 languages, German, French and English. They kept us all entertained and tried their level best. There was variety and the content was family safe. The music was very middle of the road and European/American but was a minor disappointment to me as I had hoped for local/Arab popular and contemporary disco beats.

The internet is available for hotel guests either in the lounge or by using your wi-fi laptop. The sting is the 10 dinar - £4 an hour charge.