Hotel Riu Touareg: The Big Zoned All-Inclusive On Boa Vista

Riu Touareg is a resort built at village scale: 1,181 rooms spread through low-rise buildings on the Lacacão coast at the southern tip of Boa Vista, about 20 minutes from the airport and a long way from anything else. That remoteness is the point. Guests come here for peace, long empty beach walks, and a resort big enough to hold everything they need for a week, because there is very little to walk to outside the gates.

The property was recently renovated, and it carries two credentials worth noting: a Tripadvisor Travellers' Choice award for 2025 and an Ecostars sustainability certification. Expedia guests score it 8.4/10, a Very Good rating that puts it below its sibling Riu Palace Boavista on paper but at a meaningfully lower price.

• 1,181 rooms in low-rise buildings, the biggest all-inclusive on the islands
• Zoned resort: family areas plus an Adults Only section with exclusive service
• 24-hour all-inclusive with unlimited food and drinks, free Wi-Fi throughout
• Recently renovated; Tripadvisor Travellers' Choice 2025; Ecostars certification
• Beachfront on Lacacão in remote southern Boa Vista, near Praia de Santa Monica

The room story at Riu Touareg is less about square footage and more about which half of the resort you book. The family zone holds the Family Rooms, the children's and baby pools, and the RiuLand kids' club with its animation program. The Adults Only section runs as a resort within the resort, with exclusive service and its own quieter pool space.

Book the wrong zone and you will feel it all week, so decide before you pick a rate, not at check-in.

One honest note on scale: 1,181 rooms means this is not a boutique stay. Corridors are long, the buffet is busy at peak times, and you will not learn every waiter's name. Travelers who want a small hotel where staff remember their table should look at the 68-room-scale intimacy of a Palace property instead; travelers who want space, choice, and a lower rate tend to be the ones scoring it well.

The board plan is RIU's 24-hour all-inclusive: unlimited food and drinks around the clock, not just at set meal times. Six restaurants carry it, anchored by the international buffet and themed nights, with Italian, Asian, and Cape Verdean specialty restaurants giving you a different table most nights of a week. The Cape Verdean venue is worth a booking on principle; it is the only cuisine on the list you cannot get at home.

Bars are spread so no zone goes dry: the Atlas and Mauritania bars, a swim-up pool bar, a lobby bar, and a lounge bar. Evenings run on RIU Party events rather than outside nightlife, because there is no strip of local bars to wander to on this coast. One thing to set straight before you order: as at almost every all-inclusive on the islands, the pours are predominantly local and house brands, including the local grogue rum, not imported premium labels.

Of the RIU properties here, only Riu Palace Boavista lists imported drinks in its plan.

Five pools carry the daytime load, including an infinity pool, a swim-up pool bar, and dedicated children's and baby pools on the family side. With the sea often out of play, the pools are where you will actually swim, and five of them across a zoned resort keeps the lounger math workable. A Renova Spa and a gym round out the on-site list.

Now the beach, honestly. The resort sits directly on Lacacão, a quiet white-sand beach near Praia de Santa Monica, and as a place to walk at sunrise it is superb. As a place to swim it is unreliable: Boa Vista's south coast takes strong currents and the sea conditions can be rough, often enough that sea swimming is unsafe.

Treat an ocean swim as a bonus on calm days, not a daily plan. If guaranteed calm water is the trip, Santa Maria bay on Sal is the safer island; see our notes beyond the resorts on the homepage.

The location is a decision, not a detail. Riu Touareg stands alone on the Lacacão coast at Boa Vista's southern tip, and beyond the beach there is little to explore within reach of the gates, which is exactly the peace its regulars book it for. Plan on the resort carrying the week and the beach carrying the mornings.

The booking basics: check-in opens at 3:00 PM, check-out is by noon, and free Wi-Fi runs throughout the property, which counts for something on a coast with no cafe to fall back on. The front desk answers on +238 251 2340, the number worth saving for transfer questions on an island where the resort is the only landmark for miles.

Two credentials sit behind the marketing. The resort was recently renovated throughout, and it holds an Ecostars sustainability certification alongside its Tripadvisor Travellers' Choice 2025 award. Accessibility specifics are not published in the material we checked, so if step-free access matters to your party, put the question to the hotel directly before booking.

Book Riu Touareg If

You are a family that wants a real kids' setup, because RiuLand, the children's pools, and the animation program are built in, not bolted on. You are a mixed group where the grandparents want quiet and the kids do not, because the Adults Only section and family zone let one booking serve both. You want RIU's 24-hour all-inclusive at the lowest entry price on Boa Vista, since $296 a night undercuts Riu Palace Boavista by a wide margin.

Or you simply want remoteness: a renovated, Travellers' Choice 2025 resort on an empty coast where the loudest thing at night is the RIU Party you chose to attend.

Look Elsewhere If

You measure a holiday by daily ocean swims, because the sea off Lacacão is frequently too rough and the pools will have to carry you; Sal's calmer bay resorts on our resort list fit that brief better. You want small and personal, because 1,181 rooms is the opposite of that. You want to walk out of the gates to restaurants, shops, or nightlife, because southern Boa Vista offers a beach and not much else.

And if your budget stretches to top-of-the-scale food, imported drinks, and a 9.4/10 guest score, the smaller Riu Palace Boavista up the coast is the stronger hotel, at a price. For getting off the resort entirely, our beyond the buffet notes cover what the islands actually offer.