Vila Gale Ampalius

Pedro and his team go above and beyond for all who stay from the cleaners ,reception staff and the restaurant staff Our room is huge ,spotlessly clean and the view is amazing The products such as shower gel are luxurious after a day at the pool.or beach id love to take some of these products home Breakfast has everything you would want i cant see anyone going hungry Pool areas lovely ,clean &loads of sun loungers available throughout the day Convenient location to marina ,bars ,beach &restaurants Iv read some reviews and i find it a bit unfair some of the things I see mentioned The hotel cannot control the weather the music from purobeach next door (by the way we loved listening to it &my husband is 53&im 48 so we are not young by any means) and the way people act at the Breakfast buffet its the same every Breakfast buffet iv ever been to My one issue only was the pillows 🫣I struggled as it felt like I was sleeping on tiny little cubed blocks inside the pillow case (like sleeping on lego) that being said that's personal preference to me and to me they was not comfy but that was my only one tiny issue Il be sad to be leaving at stupid o'clock Sunday morning But thankyou so much for our stay Mr&Mrs dowler

What a view! Currently staying at the Vila Gale Ampalius. We booked through jet2 as a package holiday. This is our 10th time (over 30 yrs) in Vilamoura but 1st at Ampalius. The view from our 9th floor room cannot be beaten. We booked a sea view superior room and it is more than adequate, it even has a small kitchenette. I emailed a couple of questions prior to arrival and the replies were swift and polite. Close to marina and an easy walk into Quarteira. Breakfast has everything we need and the lady who cooks the eggs is very friendly and obliging, Infact we haven’t encountered any miserable staff at all. The pools are both clean areas and no sunbed wars! A mojito at pool bar is 7 euro so great value. Will definitely be back, just wish we were staying longer. No negatives from us.

We spent 4 nights at The Vila Gale Ampalius Hotel and overall we quite enjoyed our stay.

However, I would add that it was far from perfect for various reasons and I think for some people the hotel’s deficiencies might be enough to put them off staying there and certainly from returning.

My comments as follows:

POSITIVES

✅ Bedrooms - We had a large two-bedded room on the 7th floor with a great view of the sea plus a distant view of the marina. The room included a useful kitchenette and a lounge area with sofas and a TV. The air-con was excellent and the bathroom was spacious (although the extractor could not be switched-off and constantly made a noise). There was also a large balcony with a table and two chairs.

✅ Hotel Grounds and Pool - The hotel grounds were lovely with two adult pools and a children’s pool with play area. The lawned and hedged areas were neat and tidy and everywhere looked in good order.

✅ Location - The hotel is in a great location right next to the beach, which has a handful of beach bars, and only a 4-5 minute walk from the Marina.

✅ Parking - The hotel has a free car-park on the left-hand side as you look at the main entrance. The barrier is opened using your electronic room key. The car park is quite small though and I would imagine that in the Summer it would be completely full. There is paid parking directly opposite the hotel though.

✅ Cleanliness - The hotel was spotless throughout.

✅ Hotel Bar - The bar area was nice enough and we spent a few hours there over the course of our stay. It was also VERY cheap (€6.50 for two glasses of wine!) which was good.

✅ Pool Bar - The pool bar adjacent to the larger swimming pool was also quite nice with plenty of seating and relatively cheap drinks. They did a vegan burger too which is great.

NEGATIVES

❌ Noise from The Purobeach Club opposite - This is probably the biggest issue the hotel has and I think if you’re reading this and cosidering staying at the Vila Gale Ampalius you need to be fully aware.

Directly opposite the hotel there is an open-air club that starts playing music from around midday onwards. When I say the music is loud, I’m not being over the top or showing my age! It’s so unbelievably loud that we didn’t sit on our balcony at all as we couldn’t here each other speak when we tried. Worse still, even when we were inside our room with the door fully closed, the music was still so loud that it was impossible to take a nap in the afternoon. At one point I momentarily nodded off, only to be immediately woken by a remix of ‘Insomnia’ by Faithless. The irony!

Thankfully, when we went to bed at around midnight or later, the music had stopped.

❌ Breakfast - The restaurant area where breakfast was served was nice and bright and there were lots of different types of food around the room. Unfortunately there was literally no consideration whatsoever for vegan guests except for a couple of items that just happened to be plant-based like cooked mushrooms, beans and fresh fruit.

There weren’t even any plant-based milks left out either. Each day we had to ask a member of staff for oat milk and they always made us feel like it was a chore for them. On the second morning of our stay, one of the staff was so rude to my daughter when she requested oat milk that she returned to our table feeling humiliated. To make matters worse, he took ages to bring it to us, making us sit, feeling like we were naughty children, whilst we waited for a basic product that should already have been out with the other produce. This was totally unacceptable, especially as we couldn’t drink our cups of tea or eat breakfast cereal until it arrived. We gave up on the hotel breakfast for the last two days of our stay and ate out instead which is pretty ridiculous when you think about it! WE ARE GUESTS TOO! Why treat us like second class citizens?

❌ No Iron or Ironing Board - Bizarrely, the hotel does not provide and iron or ironing board and there is no ironing room either.

The only option is to put any clothes that you want to be ironed into a small bag that’s in one of the drawers in your room, complete the form that accompanies the bag (there are no pens in the rooms by the way, so I had to walk down to reception to get one!), then leave it on your bed for housekeeping to collect when the today your room. You have to pay for this service and if you want your clothes back the same day there is a 50% surcharge. What a ridiculous system!

I arrived on the Wednesday evening with a case full of creased clothing. I’d intended to get changed into freshly ironed clothes but couldn’t and, instead, had to spend the first hour of my short holiday finding out how the hotel’s laundry process worked, running downstairs for a pen, completing a form that had tiny writing, doing the maths of working out how much it all cost (plus the 50% surcharge!) and writing that on the form, then asking reception if they’d be kind enough to have the bag collected that evening rather than when housekeeping came the following day (they did). Only after that was I able to wander down to the marina (looking somewhat disheveled due to being in clothes I’d worn since the early hours of that day) and get on with having a holiday.

For goodness sake, put irons and ironing boards in your hotel rooms!

❌ Inconsistent Staff Attitudes - I’ve already mentioned the horribly rude staff member at breakfast on the Friday morning (an older man with a beard and glasses). Well he wasn’t alone in being less than friendly and whilst the reception staff were always kind and friendly, elsewhere the hotel seemed to have a lot of grumpy people on its payroll!

We quite liked the hotel bar but the staff that worked there seemed unable to smile and weren’t particularly friendly. The lady in the cafe was similarly unsmiling.

❌ The Luggage Storage Area Is Not Monitored - So, it’s your departure day and, having checked out of the hotel, you naturally want to leave your luggage and bags at the hotel whilst you spend the last few hours of your holiday wandering around shops, cafes etc. Well, the hotel is happy for you to do this BUT the area where luggage is stored is not locked and is not monitored by staff. In short, they tell you where the storage area is and you just walk in and leave all your belongings in a room that literally anyone can access. So you’re faced with the option of either dragging your belongings around with you before heading to the airport or leaving all your expensive clothes, toiletries, jewellery etc in a room and hope that nobody chooses to steal them.

Again, this is ridiculous! Staff should take guest luggage to a locked room and store it safely.

❌ No Plant-Milk In the Coffee Shop - This seems like a strange oversight.

Would I stay there again? I’m torn as I like the location of the hotel and the quality of the rooms but there were just so many issues, many of them silly things that should not happen, that I’m really not sure.