- Tenerife
- Puerto de la Cruz
- Riu Garoe
This attractive hotel, completely refurbished in spring 2012, enjoys a wonderful location in the La Paz district of Puerto de la Cruz, just 300 metres away from the Botanical Garden and 1 km away from the beach and the famous Lago Martiánez salt water pools by renowned artist César Manrique. The city centre with its picturesque narrow streets, squares and multitude of bars and cafés as well as shops can be reached within a short stroll. Features of the hotel include a 300 m2 outdoor pool, a children's pool and an indoor pool, all of them heated in winter. Guests will appreciate services and amenities such as a children's playground, a complimentary sauna as well as a complimentary shuttle service to the centre. The restaurant with terrace offers delicious Canarian and international cuisine. A lovely place for couples and families for a beach holiday close to all amenities of urban life.
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We have just spent a week at this beautiful hotel. What an amazing experience. I had a room issue, no fault of the hotel, Pavel on reception sorted it for me and exceeded my expectations...
The staff here are amazing, they all work incredibly hard and make the guest experience exceptional. The restaurant staff are brilliant and the food is incredible. Gustavo by the pool keeps everyone happy and everything spotless. The gardens and plants are beautiful thanks to a skilled team of gardeners. The views are superb. Whomever leads this team is to be congratulated you have created a real gem. Thank you all for a perfect relaxing week.
La Paz is an area we know well as my Grandmother used to have an apartment here and spend her winters here. She is now 98 and the we wanted to return to be able to share how the area has developed etc. I think this hotel was built around 20 years ago and it was one that I always had my eye on when I’ve looked due to the location and quality...
It is definitely a 5 star review as our stay was so good. At the end of the review I do add a few niggles, but they were merely that and we do plan on returning.
The staff - impeccable service from the whole team throughout the holiday, absolutely faultless. Understated, polite and helpful. Thank you all.
Pool - part of the reason for booking this hotel was due to the heated pool, it didn’t disappoint. It was heated perfectly so it cooled you down from the sun but was not cold so it was easy to get it. We used the pool every day.
Pool area - thank goodness there was no music blasting out. I simply can’t understand hotels that still do that when most people have ear pods these days. So if you want music bring your own. The pool area is kept impeccably clean like the rest of the hotel. There is a ticket system for collecting a fresh pool towel daily. You are given a ticket at check in and you redeem it for a towel. When you give your towel back you are given a ticket for the next time you want one.
Sunloungers - These are more up market and you collect a thick cushion to place on the top. There are a selection of fixed and portable sunshades. In high season there will not be enough loungers for guests. We struggled on some occasions to find just 2 in the sun. We went out in the day and would arrive back between 3:30pm to 4:30pm. The pool attendant was fantastic and seemed to know what was available if you asked. One day he asked 2 others guests to remove items of clothes they had spread on them so stop others from using them. We wouldn’t have known this and just thought they were occupied, we were thankful.
Location - the hotel is situated on the edge of the upmarket suburb of La Paz. It is a short walk (5-10mins) into La Paz and to larger supermarkets, bars and restaurants. 20-30mins into Puerto de La Cruz. Top tip for walking into Puerto, do not go down the main road. Go into La Paz and head to the Mirador (viewing point just past the church) Just before you cross the road to the viewing point look left and see the pedestrianised broad walkway. Head down here and near the end, before you reach the main road take a right down steps this will bring you out at the shopping centre where the hotel bus service will drop you off.
Rooms - spacious and well equipped. The beds were very comfortable. There were tea and coffee making facilities. A reasonably priced mini bar and the television had a few British channels. We appreciated having a terrace with a sun loungers as well as a table and 2 chairs . We made good use of this.
Bar prices - very reasonable. In the restaurant we paid €10.50 for a bottle of house red wine. You can also buy the wine by the glass or half litre. The beer was €3.70 and the cocktails ranged from €5-9.
Food - some of the best we’ve ever had in a hotel. Consistently good and varied. It was the quality of the food that made it so good and the fact they obviously have great chefs. I’m not going to go into details on the food as others reviews cover it. Needless to say it has everything you’d expect and more.
Seating in restaurant - There are 3 areas to the restaurant, the main seating area, the side by the garden and the conservatory area looking out to the sea in the distance. For breakfast you can sit anywhere you like. In the evening, you chose either the earlier or later sitting. You are allocated a table and that is your table for your whole stay. So if you do not like the location of your table I would speak up on the first day. We never ate in the main dining area as we found it a bit noisy. We were allocated a table in the conservatory and we were very happy with it as it was quiet and away from the food.
Entertainment - mediocre at best, if good entertainment is crucial to you then this is not the hotel for you. The entertainment is geared to the older generation (older than me and I’m 50). But it is pleasant enough.
Our tour operator was TUI. We had a great deal with them. We are usually independent travellers however due to the expensive transfers to Puerto it was more economical to book a package with transfers. Interestingly, we never met the rep in our whole week stay.
Niggles/even better if - No fresh orange juice at breakfast. The juice was all concentrated and tasted watered down (I’m the person that usually adds water to juices as they are too rich). I couldn’t find any avocados at breakfast no matter how hard I looked. It is something we are used to for breakfast in the Uk but perhaps not a ‘thing’ in Spain. You are given dressing gowns with the rooms but these are removed the day before you leave, probably so people don’t pack them. We were not told this and spent a while looking for them until we guessed what had happened. Safe, just be warned you have to pay €2 per day There weren’t enough coat hangers. I’d expected more. I think we had 12 between us. Not really the hotels fault but…. The age old towels on sun loungers. We spent one day round the pool after going to the botanical gardens in the morning. There were beds beside us with towels on when we arrived just after 11am. We went for lunch at 2:15 in the hotel pool bar. When we returned to our loungers just after 3 the occupants had just arrived. Again they left after about 45 mins leaving the towels. Before returning later for another short period. They had prime spaces in the sun, at the front. This is really unfair for others we watched looking for beds. The best idea we’ve ever seen to deal with this issue is a ticket system on a cruise. All unoccupied beds were given a ticket and an hour later if nobody was still there then the towels and personal belongings were removed. Noise from other guests was an issue where we were (room308). Although there were not too many children/teenagers in the hotel, our room seemed surrounded by them. So we did have lots of door banging, child noise, shouting, children/teenagers running up the corridors etc in our area. Great to place the families together but probably not a more mature couple in amongst them.
Well…what can we say that we have not said before in praise of this wonderful hotel with it’s first class facilities, garden, spa and peaceful location outside of Puerto De la Cruz. Also, the staff at the Garoe excel in all that they do for their valued guests. Quite honestly, we are recently retired airline professional’s, who travelled the world in both our career’s and personally in our private lives and we keep returning to the RIU Garoe, simply because of it’s constant & sustained quality in every department and aspect...
This hotel is restful and peaceful and, in our opinion, more geared for couples looking for a quality & tranquil atmosphere. Yes, the hotel is beautifully situated in the up market La Paz area. It is not in the centre of town. However, for us, this simply adds to it’s appeal. The RIU Garoe is First Class and it has simply the best and most caring and wonderful staff in the hospitality business in the lush & beautiful north of Tenerife, which is a million miles away from the much busier and over developed tourist area’s of the south. Come here to chill, relax and be pampered. It’s great for the soul and you’ll come home recharged. We can’t wait for our next visit. Thanks to all the team at the Garoe from Director Hernandez Garcia to Head’s of Departments to all personnel. You are amazing and keep up your fantastic work. See you soon.
GOOD POINTS
We just returned from a 7 night stay at the Rui Garoe. The hotel is beautiful, with immaculate gardens, classy traditional cream decor and furnishings and a vibe of a wellness retreat.
The staff here are outstanding and go above and beyond to please the guests - I’d rate their service as on par with a 5* hotel...
The infection control is good with staff working tirelessly hard to clean and sanitise frequently.
The spa (at an additional charge) is recently reopened following Covid closures and it’s very beautiful, large and modern, i had the best ever deep tissue massage.
The inside bar and stage area is chic and laid back with outside patio heaters and a decent program of nightly entertainment (flamenco, pianists, cabaret singers) the cocktails are expertly made, delicious and reasonably priced (and powerful!) the bar staff and waitresses are a delight.
NEGATIVE POINTS
There is a strong overall majority of a single nationality guest (German) They are, in my opinion, generally different from English guests in that they were very serious, stared at the few English guests and were rude in the restaurant when queuing for food stations. English guests will find their general demeanour and lack of warmth difficult, it was surreal for me to not seeing happy smiley faces enjoying their holidays and interacting with different nationalities.
THE POOL IS FREEZING despite being told it was heated to 25 degrees. Most guests found it too uncomfortable to use which is a major disappointment. We also saw four separate accidents around the pool side where adults were slipping on the extremely slippery tiles. Considering the average age of guests that the hotel caters to (50+) using high slip tiles doesn’t make any sense.
There was no boxes of disposable gloves and hand sanitizers at the buffet self-service for guests to use (optionally) and so all the other stringent frequent cleaning efforts being made (balconies, hand rails, tables etc) only then to allow hundreds of pairs of bare hands to use the food utensils over and over during one service sitting is silly.
TUI REP - Patricio
My partner saw the TUI rep to book some excursions he’d seen on the Tui APP only to be told flaky information about availability and fluctuating prices - be wary!
LOCATION
The hotel is outside of Puerto De La Cruz but provides an excellent courtesy minibus that operates hourly (day time) it takes just 5 minutes to the town. The hotel is in a residential area with nothing to do so if you’re the type that likes to go for evening walks after dinner, this isn’t for you.
I stayed in this hotel for 2 weeks and overall experience was super great. Food in the morning and in the dinner were superb. You have buffee, where you can pick as much food as you want...
They offered food of all types (vegan, oily, healthy etc). 3x a week they offered food from different countries and of course Tenerife based food was always offered. We had a problem with our original room since some people at hotel smoked at balconies (no signs in the rooms too that smoking on balcony is not allowed) and in the first week, it was impossible to keep our balcony door open, due cigarette smell. Front desk was helpful and gave us new room where such problem no longer existed. Housekeeping was AMAZING. Rooms were cleaned extremely well. Waitresses were very friendly and quick. They took your plates away almost immediately when you finished eating. This hotel was definitely one of the BEST hotels in Tenerife. The location (Puerto de la Cruz) is the cleanest and the most beautiful location in entire Tenerife. You could not see a lot of tourists around and i loved it (compared to South-Tenerife). What's the most important? You can see el Teide mountain from the hotel itself. Pool boys were super helpful but you can sunbath only from 10am to 6pm which is weird since it was light outside up to 8pm. Pool was kind of cold but it did not bother me much because it was so warm outside. If you ordered something from the outside bar, it was brought to you while you were sunbathing. If you visit the hotel, definitely walk around the area since it offers some of the most beautiful sunsets and sunrises I have ever seen. when you choose a room, choose a view towards the mountain. Sunrises are the most beautiful things there when you wake up. The negative things are: