Martinhal Beach Resort  Portugal – The Finest Luxury Family Resort in Europe

Whenever I see an advert that says they are the best or the finest I always wonder how they manage to work that out, have they visited every other version of their idea?

With this in mind already I headed to Martinhal Beach Resort feeling skeptical although loads of people on twitter told me that the resort was fabulous.

We were given a bay house to occupy for the weekend and I was absolutely amazed with the size and space of the house. The bay houses have the bedrooms on the bottom and the living room and kitchen upstairs so that those rooms get the best view. Downstairs you also have two bathrooms. The master bedroom has a huge ensuite and their is a family bathroom too. The smaller bedroom featured two single beds and a pull down single bed which forms a bunk bed. The girls thought that this was fantastic. Both bedrooms had sliding patio doors leading to the small gardens.

The rooms are all decorated in neutral colours using local materials. The lady that showed me around informed me that they had a designer to make all of their furniture specifically for the resort. I loved the cork table!

We had a welcome food pack in our accommodation which was perfect for filling some small gaps. The pack was very breakfast orientated and my only improvement would be to maybe offer a lunch style welcome pack instead. We were half board so found that a sandwich and crisps were welcome in the afternoon whereas we didn’t really need the breakfast items as breakfast was included in our stay. I loved the fact the pack contained local produce such as the orange juice and wine. There is a small supermarket onsite that sells nearly everything you could need including baby formula, nappies and souvenirs.

I was extremely impressed with the child friendly items around the accommodation and the rest of the resort with high chairs (of varying sorts for different ages available in the restaurants plus one in the accommodation), foot stools, toilet seat inserts and a travel cot in the house.

There were play parks and play areas dotted around the resort with items for a variety of ages. My girls absolutely loved the sand and trampoline area as well as these great climbing frames and swings.

There is also kids clubs that are available as well as a room for older children which had table football, computer consoles, air hockey and more. We went in a quiet season when the kids club was free but we would have happily paid for it for a bit of piece of peace and quiet.

The small things such as having a kids bar area and even an ipad for them to use as well as toys, games and crafts. The girls absolutely loved it and it was hard to make them leave.

All the swimming pools on resort are heated and during the warmer months this area would be an indoor and outdoor pool with the door open to move between the two. There were two small slides in the indoor area as well as a variety of floats available for the children to use.

This large heated pool is the same depth all the way through apart from at the steps in one corner. It is the closest pool to the beach so I can imagine it would also be the busiest with lots of seating nearby for parents to watch over their children.

As well as the other pools there is a small shallow pool for your children. This is near the inside/outside pool and with the gazebo cover the pool is shaded for some of the day.

The Garden Pool wasn’t open when we were there but surrounded by natural gardens that are similar to the natural park surrounding the resort you can really get a feel for how lovely this would be. The Houses surrounding this part of the resort are called the garden houses and have the bedrooms upstairs and the living room and kitchen downstairs so they can benefit from the lovely views into the gardens and see the wildlife too. We saw a lot of rabbits around this area which was lovely.

As well as the fabulous pools the resort has an amazing beach which is great for water sports. During the high season you are able to rent a variety of boats, pedalos and other water sports equipment and head out onto the water. They looked like great fun but the sea was far too cold for us to want to do this in January. Instead we spend time relaxing on the beach.

The beach was one of my favourite places to be as the water was absolutely mesmerising and the girls loved playing in the waves.

No matter where we looked there was amazing views to discover and as it is in the Algarve even in January the weather was warm enough for us to enjoy ourselves in the outdoor pools and to play on the beach.

I would love to return in the summer when it was busier to see how the resort and staff coped with lots of guests. We found the staff to be brilliant no matter where we were on resort and we were amazed to find the resort so quiet when we thought it was the perfect venue for a winter sun break.

If you are looking to get away as a family where you know the kids will be catered for and not be bored then Martinhal Beach Resort could be just the place. Beautiful scenery, lots to do on resort and even a spa for you to enjoy a lovely massage whilst the kids are in kids club. Add to that the amazing food and you really can’t go wrong.

We left resort as a family really believing that Martinhal Beach resort really was the finest Luxury family resort in Europe and all of the other guests there seemed to feel the same.