Riu Palace Tikida Agadir

A near PERFECT resort! There are so many positive highlights about the RUI Palace Tikida Agadir- I'll share the main ones as well as a few key tips about the beach, pool, and cuisine!

SUPER FRIENDLY and POLITE staff! Fatima at the Front Desk stood out as so helpful and just lovely when we arrived- she took great care of us throughout our 5 night stay. We have traveled to many resorts around the world, including much of the Caribbean, and the RIU Agadir staff win, hands-down! They are so warm, well-trained, hard-working, professional, genuine, and kind. The guests are also extremely polite and considerate-- everyone gives each other space, nobody is comparing their clothes, gear, appearance, or anything else-- you can truly relax and do what you want to do. If you are from the Anglo-sphere: most of the staff speak both English and French but a few don't speak English at all- but they will quickly find another staff member who does!

EXCELLENT BUFFET- The daily breakfast, lunch, and dinner offer a very good variety including meat, fish, poultry, pork, vegetarian options, and fresh fruit and salad. Local breads, crepes, waffles, and an unusually quick egg/omelette station are available at every breakfast and the hours are perfect: 7am to 10:30am. Get there early for a relaxing and quiet breakfast, but even until the last five minutes the staff make sure that you have all food available! This was so different than the cold food and colder shoulders that we have experienced in other resorts if we decide to have a late breakfast. Every need that you have is attended to and the staff go out of their way to make sure that you can find what you need. The only thing that they don't seem to have is fresh cream, so keep that in mind if you like cream in your coffee. While the 3 restaurants included in your package offer a change a pace and have amazing service, the food at the buffet is generally better- we found the portion size to be too small in the restaurant and there were not enough options for non-seafood eaters in the Crystal or Steakhouse restaurants. We haven't tried the Moroccan restaurant yet- will update after we do!

POOL: The pool is nice but busy- a lot of kids, a lot of balls and games all day from 11am onwards. If you want to have a relaxing swim, come before 11am! Once 11:30 hits, the music starts blasting and exercise/dance led by the "Animation Team" take over one side of the pool area. You can still swim on the other side, and there is a lot of space, but the music, noise, and whistle blowing are near-constant until about 1pm when things get quiter again until 3pm. The afternoon is super busy and loud due to music and whistle blowing again- the amount of times that lifeguards blow their whistles in Agadir really surprised us- it happens on the beach too, so it's not just the hotel lifeguards.

POOL SEATING: It's true that most seating (cabanas and chairs) are reserved by 8am, but you will always find somewhere to sit if you're not picky. My husband woke up at 5am a couple of mornings to reserve a cabana for us- note that the cabanas have a plank wood roof so sun rays get through, whereas most of the sunbeds/chairs have umbrellas that offer more shade. But see my note below on the weather!

WEATHER: The RUI Palace Agadir is beachfront hotel and has a lot of mist and fog. Most days are overcast for at least the morning- but it's beautiful! I thought I was going to hate it because I am a sun worshipper, but it was actually lovely. By midday/afternoon, the sun peaks out and 5-8pm is often sunny and warm. It can get windy from time to time and the weather changes rapidly- cloud cover can come and go within minutes! The beachfront looks stunning when the misty clouds are covering it, but you can only see the hills and sunset when the mist lifts- and some evenings it does not clear up at all. Use AI and not your weather app to try and predict the sunny, clear days because Agadir is much sunnier if you drive inland even 15 minutes- the weather by the coast is totally different.

PROMENADE and BEACH: The beach is not bad but do not expect clear water like you have in the Caribbean or some parts of the Mediterranean. The sand is golden and gets very hot by midday- you should wear sandals or shoes on the dry sand if your feet are sensitive or not used to heat. The water is warm by afternoon, with small rocks here and there, and the waves were gentle and easily swimmable even for children. The shallow area went one for many feet into the ocean, making it a very safe swim for the average adult. Consider what you will be wearing for swim on the beach. If you are used to wearing a bikini on the beach, you will be in a small minority here and receive many long stares- it is noticeable. While on the resort, staff do not wear hijab, as soon as you leave the resort, most women are in hijab. Local people including many families, are enjoying the long, walkable promenade and beachfront all along the coast. Even until 1am, children and families are walking, eating, and having fun together. It's lovely, although a little sad to see so many women covered in hijabs- including full Niqabs- while the men in the same family are in short bathing suits. At least in some other countries with Islamic culture, you will see men dressed in long pants and long sleeves- it is usually considered haram to show your knees or stomach as a man, but somehow in Morocco there is a much bigger divide between the sexes when it comes to modesty. There are families with the younger generation of women and girls less covered up than their mothers and grandmothers, but still many fully covered in dark hijabs. If this is something that might impact your experience, keep this in mind.

MOROCCAN LOCALS: As a whole, the Moroccan people are absolutely lovely- they are warm, genuine, friendly, polite, and seemed truly interested in speaking to us, learning where we are from, and exchanging a few words. Our experiences with hotel staff were amazing and we also felt welcomed and respected by the Moroccan people outside of the resort. They are clearly a very proud people, as they should be, and many identified themselves as being from Agadir.

OVERALL: This was one of our favourite all-inclusive of all time- and we have been to many in Europe, South America, and the Caribbean. The staff were awesome, the food was really great and lots of variety available in the buffet for all of the restaurant's open hours, and the rooms, hotel grounds, and lobby areas were all spacious, clean, and nicely decorated. We loved our stay and would highly recommend. This hotel deserves its 5-star rating. Even though there are many guests and staff all around, you will have enough space to do what you like and can find quiet places to sit alone if you want to do. The staff are always available when you need them and they seem to actually enjoy their jobs, which makes the guest experience so much better than all-inclusives with resentful or depressed staff who seem like they are being forced to work there or wish they didn't have to serve you. At Hotel Riu Palace Tikida Agadir, it's clear that you are the guest and they want you to feel that way all day for your entire stay, whether you are by the pool, in the restaurant, walking around, or anything else! A great spot!

Honest review as a family: just returned from a 10 night stay at riu takida palace, positives: very clean, staff very attentive and polite, very relaxed atmosphere, on beach front, felt very safe when walking along promenade, negatives: entertainment in the evening very poor and needs more energy and variety, although there was a mini disco for my 7 year old it just lacked energy and variety in evening shows, daytime activity needs to be announced more around the pool in order to get more people involved, all inclusive Buffett Very repetitive, there is enough for all to eat but it was very samey for a 10 night stay. I would recommend the excisursions outside of the hotel if you are staying longer than 7 days, we did the markets, crocco park and horse and camel riding. The weather was very misty and cloud coverage for August, so if you like to wake to sun and blue skies then it can be hit and miss, but we did still get a nice tan. I would also expect in a 5 star hotel to have a proper fold out double sofa bed, not just a single sofa which was extremely hard to sleep on for my children. It's a very posh hotel but needs more attention towards entertainment and variety of Buffett.

We’ve just returned from a lovely family holiday here and overall we had such a good time. There are so many positives about this hotel and some genuinely wonderful people working here.

The staff & our room 🏨

The staff were absolutely brilliant – so friendly, welcoming and hardworking. A special mention to housekeeping, who took the time to make some gorgeous decorations on our bed with rose petals. Such a lovely little touch and things like that really do make a holiday feel special.

We were incredibly lucky with our room and had a beautiful unrestricted beach view. Waking up and looking out at that every morning was gorgeous and something I definitely miss already!

The Wi-Fi could be quite intermittent, which could be frustrating at times, but it certainly didn’t spoil our holiday.

Food & drinks 🍰☕️

There was a good variety of food and we always found something we liked. But I have to give a HUGE shout-out to whoever is responsible for the desserts because they were amazing! 😂👏

The flambé bananas were such a fantastic addition and the custard-filled profiteroles were absolute perfection. Honestly, well done to the dessert chefs!

The cocktails weren’t really for me, although perhaps that was a blessing for my calorie intake 😅. On the other hand, the coffee was really good. I normally struggle to find coffee I like on holiday, but they made a genuinely nice cup here.

Pools & atmosphere 🏊‍♀️

I loved how many different pool areas there were. It meant you could move around and find somewhere that suited you rather than feeling stuck in one main pool area all week. My favourite was the second pool down from the main building.

The foam pool party was brilliant! Such good fun, great pop music and I ended up fully in the foam dancing away 😂. Definitely one of those silly holiday moments that you remember.

Some of the areas around the sunbeds could have done with a little more regular cleaning, but overall we really enjoyed the pools and grounds.

The spa 💆‍♀️✨

I ended up visiting the spa several times during our stay and it became another little highlight of the holiday. I had reflexology on one day, a scrub and massage on another, and also treated myself to a gel pedicure – so I gave it a pretty thorough test! 😂

Every visit felt like a proper little holiday treat. The reflexology was incredibly relaxing (I was practically falling asleep!), and the scrub and massage were lovely too. It was so nice having somewhere to escape to for an hour, properly switch off and come out feeling completely relaxed.

I was also really pleased with my gel pedicure. It was lovely being able to have it done at the hotel rather than having to venture anywhere else, and it lasted beautifully.

The spa staff were welcoming and made me feel comfortable on every visit. If you enjoy a bit of pampering on holiday, I’d definitely recommend making time for the spa – and apparently, if you’re anything like me, one treatment may very quickly turn into three! 😂💕

And now for the part of the holiday I wasn’t prepared for… the cats 🐈❤️

I honestly didn’t expect the hotel cats to become such a huge part of my holiday, but they completely stole my heart.

I’d actually brought cat biscuits over from the UK and started feeding them, and before long I was looking out for the same little faces every day. They all had their own personalities and I became ridiculously attached to them – particularly my little favourites who we ended up giving names to.

But the one that really got me was a beautiful mumma cat and her kittens.

She was such a gentle, trusting little soul. The fact that she eventually trusted us enough to let us stroke her babies and even hold them felt incredibly special. Sitting with her and those tiny kittens became one of my favourite parts of the entire holiday.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how difficult it would be to leave them.

On our last day I knew every time I went to see them that it might be the final time. Saying goodbye to the mumma and her babies absolutely broke my heart. I cried then, I cried afterwards, and I’ve cried since getting home too! I never imagined I’d go on an all-inclusive family holiday and come home missing a group of cats quite this much. 💔

You start worrying about who will feed them, whether the kittens will be okay and whether that lovely little mumma will continue to be looked after. You know they’re not technically your cats, but after seeing them every day, feeding them and earning their trust, they somehow become part of your holiday family.

So to anyone visiting who is an animal lover – be warned. You may arrive with a suitcase and leave with several imaginary cats in it. 😂❤️

I really hope the hotel continues to treat the cats kindly and recognises what a lovely part of the resort they are. For some guests, particularly animal lovers like me, they aren’t a nuisance at all – they’re one of the things that makes the place memorable.

I’d love to think that future guests might give them a little bit of kindness too. If you’re heading here and have room in your luggage for some cat biscuits, you’ll make some little furry residents very happy. 🐾

Overall ❤️

We had a genuinely lovely holiday. Beautiful views, lots of pools, fantastic staff, some excellent food and plenty of memories.

There are a few areas that could be improved, which is why I’ve given 4 rather than 5 stars, but I’d happily look back on our time here with really fond memories.

And apparently I’ll also be thinking about a ginger cat, a little grey/black-and-white one, a beautiful mumma and her kittens for the foreseeable future. 🥹🐈❤️

Thank you to all the wonderful staff who helped make our holiday so special – and please look after those gorgeous cats for me.

Love Sam x