What can I say, what a great hotel. The building work has now been completed, and even though the hotel was at full occupancy, (being Christmas) it didn't feel overcrowded.

We tried all the restaurants, and all of them were absolutely brilliant. The only down side is that in some of the bars the staff insist that they only have Demi Sec sparkling wine and do not stock Brut sparkling wine, however, in some of the other bars, they would go and get a bottle (or two) from one of the other bars when they ran out. We were there for the Gala dinner on Christmas eve, I have never seen so much food. Lobster, huge prawns, caviare and about everything else you can imagine. There were also fantastic sculptures made out of water melons and chocolate.

All the swimming pools are open now, and although we didn

I have just spent 2 weeks (15th Oct) at the Iberostar Bahia and it has some very good points, however not 5 star. There are no optics in the room, no fluffy robes and no beach bar. However the food is excellent, rooms spacious and beach is beautiful. George the First Choice rep is there to meet you off the coach and say goodbye and that is the total of his use.

All 3 speciality restaurants were very good however I felt the resort lacked a Brazilian feel and I could have been anywhere. Typical Iberostar hotel e.g. an impressive lobby bar, windy swim up bar and spacious entertainment room. Star friends as always worked extremely hard and although they were not fluent in English they tried very hard and every day you saw improvements. Nivea, a waitress in the buffet always had a smile at morning and night. The towel sculptures were a nice touch and tips were not expected however gratefully received. Remember you are entitled to 3 speciality restaurants a week, however whilst I was there they were trying to limit it to 5 a fortnight!

The first week the hotel was quite quiet however the second week there were far more Brazilians holidaying in the hotel. This sometimes made you feel like you were wearing

Just come back from a lovely 2 weeks.

The hotel is stunning with the most wonderful decor. The rooms are spacious and very tastefully decorated. the pools and sun terraces are immaculate.

There is still work going on in the hotel but you do not see or hear anything.

The food in the buffet restaurant as well as the three speciality restaurants is excellent. This hotel really does deserve it's 5 star rating.

I would most certainly go again. We took the opportunity to fly the 1hr 50 mins to Rio which was well worth it, stayed overnight.

After a pretty long day travelling it was fantastic to see such a beautiful brand new hotel; although it was dark as we searched for our room, the grounds were all lit up and looked stunning.

Our room on the ground floor was 50 yds from the huge pool and only 75 yds from the swim-up bar! I knew it was going to be a "tough 2 weeks"!! Immediately to our right was the beach where palm trees offered a bit of respite from the sun.

The hotel grounds were wonderfully laid out with long walkways running around the boundary and leading back to the main block/food/disco and theatre areas. During out 2 weeks a new block was opened plus another swimming pool and this was a nice quieter area away from the main pool area & noisy people.

The 1 night trip down to Rio is worth every penny just to see Christ - The Redeemer statue alone. It was wonderful!

The traffic layout around Rio is quite confusing, but the tour coach and guide get you around to see all the best sights - brilliant 2 days away - great memories.

What a fab holiday, no complaints whatsoever. There is building work being carried out but we didn

We arrived in Salvador on time and having filled in the immigration form on the plane it only took about 20 mins to get out of the airport. First Choice reps George (who was our rep at the Iberostar) and JB (John Baxter) who we first met as our rep in Goa made us welcome and pointed out the transport to our hotel. We had a band at the airport as we were the first, First Choice people to arrive.

Onto the hotel. After going through the impressive main security gate the hotel looked fabulous against the backdrop of palm trees. Onto main reception which again was pretty painless as we had filled the registration forms in on the bus coming from the airport. 10 minutes later we were in our fabulous room overlooking the pool. Our baggage was delivered by the very efficient bell boys we had had a shower and got changed and it was down to the bar for a beer.

The hotel decorations are very very impressive. The hotel architect has done a great job, the building is fabulous.
The hotel was full with Spanish from corporate Toyota. some of their manners left a lot to be desired and coupled with the fact that the bar and waiter staff could not speak English we found it hard to get a drink as they could speak Spanish and they tended to serve the people they could understand. However, saying that the staff were all going to English lessons and it did get a lot better as time went on(also a few real tips went a long way)

The food was very European not like Iberostar in Mexico. There we got steaks breakfast, dinner and tea as they were catering for the yanks. Also we did get lobster and king prawns on 2 occasions. In Brazil we did get steak once or twice and king prawns twice. No lobster but then again there were no Americans there. The food generally was excellent. It was of a high standard and well presented. Food hygiene was excellent. Service in this restaurant was the only thing that could be criticised. I think it was more due to the fact that they could not speak English or us (no Portuguese) but generally it was a bit slow to get drinks or even water sometimes, but they did try and they were getting better.

There were 3 speciality restaurants. First the Japanese. All I can say is don

The Iberostar Bahia Brazil

We were the first from Thomas Cook to stay at this hotel.
Unlike Andy whom travelled with First Choice we did not have the immigration forms we had to complete these at the airport, and them wait for some considerable time to go through immigration, we landed at 5.15pm arrived at our hotel at 8.00pm. I agree with a lot of what Andy said but I notice he made no reference to the weather.

If anybody is travelling to Brazil please note the awful is not what you would expect, now is the rain season in Brazil, you will note the holiday brochures do not give this information, we had considerable long and heavy rain spells, half days of sun a lot of overcast conditions and because of the location of the hotel all you could do when the weather was bad was sit around. We were lucky we went for 2 weeks we did have 4 days of sunshine the first week the second week was on the whole a washout apart from the last 2 days. The sun goes down very early and June is the beginning of Winter in Brazil.

The summer falls in the months of December, January and February.

Having said that I did enjoy the holiday, and the hotel is excellent