We stayed at this hotel in June for a family holiday. We were celebrating 3 big birthdays. The oldest in the family is 80 years old & the youngest 50 years old. The hotel ticked all our boxes. Wonderful bedrooms & facilities and several lovely restaurants. It is expensive but, in my view, worth every penny.

We stayed for a week in the main building with garden views. Every attention to detail and service superb! A choice of restaurant for every night! We ate twice at Adega the Portuguese restaurant and once at Ocean, the one with the Michelin star. Beautiful gardens around all the buildings make it very special and I would love to think we could return soon!

We are still staying at VVP and everthing is fine but one thing gripes, their teenage club isn't always on and in our two week stay only 3 times has it run!! This is becuase so few children take up the offer to partake.

Even on the trips orgainsed, more could have been done. A diving trip, was a snorkeling trip which all in all resulted 25 mins snorkeling and 5 hours out of the hotel. More to follow but beware, if you expect your teenager to be distracted be careful. Our wasn't and that's fustrating as we had promised him their would be lots to do.

This is a 5 Star resort - no doubt, fantastic staff, grounds, attention to detail etc. In fact I could end my review there and say....just go!
But to be helpful here are my thoughts........Based on previous comments we opted for 2 of the newer Oasis Ocean View Suites, upstairs for the adults and downstairs for the children. These offer the ability to shut the outside door and have a self contained 2 bedroomed suite with a roof terrace - perfection, but, costly, at €1400 per night B&B! I would agree with previous comments that the downstairs suite would suffer excessive noise from the upstairs dwellers. Furthermore, there is a fair amount of walking required to get to and from all the facilities, but this does not dismiss from the overall experience. We never called for a club car.
The restaurants are all very good, again probably slightly more expensive than than average for the Algarve, but all the ingredients are fresh, the wine list excellent and the ambience, on the whole, very pleasant. We particularly enjoyed Arte Nautica, which involves a 10 minute minibus transfer (no hassle) for its freshest, of fresh fish and Aladdin, again, for fresh fish, seafood and a flambe. The sommelier here is also delightful and very educational, I like my wines, particularly from the Douro.
We ate at the Ocean restaurant, but cannot but feel that this is slightly misplaced in a beach side resort? The whole ambience, from the somewhat monastic dining room (too windy on the terrace for comfort), to the overly stark service, did not make for an enjoyable eating experience on holiday. As a business meal it would be fine, but it simply doesn't fit comfortably with the rest of the resort experience, sorry Ocean Restaurant!
As mentioned previously the grounds are vast and beautifully maintained with exquisite fountains and ponds, but despite this, we felt that the resort appears to suffer from a lack of swimming pool space.
There is a heated pool connecting with the indoor pool next to the main building, but you feel a little confined by the excessive plant growth which has occurred over the years around the pool. There are two further smaller (unheated) pools by the clubhouse, one, however, is almost unusable due to its depth (2.15m), which would be fine if it was a 25m pool for swimming lengths, but is useless as a "dipping" pool which it is designed for! Down a flight of stairs is a smaller pool, adjacent to the pool bar, but rather oddly, separated from the bar! This pool is again a little too small for the size of the resort and there was always an unhappy mix of children wishing to enjoy themselves and, the more mature, adults wishing to relax on the suspended sun-loungers - we witnessed the occasional flare-up from splashing episodes on more than one occasion! Furthermore, those trying to tuck into an enjoyable lunch at The Whale Restaurant would also be disturbed by pool noise.
I cannot help but feel that in a resort of this size it is "crying-out" for a good sized (25m) pool with plenty of concreted surrounds with sun loungers placed perhaps on the expanse of grass in front of the residence building?
The beach is small and shared with locals. It can only be reached by 35 quite steep stairs, so is not ideal for all. the loungers have to be cramped-in close to each other due to the available space. Despite this many days were spent down on the beach and in the adjoining rock pools. Furthermore, for a more complete beach experience, one can take advantage of the minibus shuttle to the huge Armacao de Pera beach on which the Arte Nautica Restaurant stands.
Tennis courts, mini-golf, and pitch and putt golf course were all well used by my 14 and 11 year olds and all got the "thumbs-up". My 11 year old had a couple of one hour 1:1 Tennis lessons with the Tennis Pro for €50 which was good value.
Will we be back? Probably, as the 2 weeks were heavenly for the adults, but we all said we would definitely be back if a decent sized heated swimming pool was added.