I've always loved this hotel from the very first visit when I was a kid 6 months after its opening. The place is beautiful, the amount of bars and restaurants are reasonable and they serve from good to excellent food (*1) and decent to amazing cocktails (*2), the bedrooms are well packed and very clean, the receptionist are amazing at their job and they work with lot of empathy so do the bartenders and for the most part the staff in general are all nice and respectful. The pandemic response is very good(*3), the staff keeps reminding you to wear the mask in the places where is needed and there is antibacterial gel in most parts where contact is frequent. However if there is anything borderline bad, terrible or more appropriately said, mediocre is the entertainment, the pandemic isn't to blame here; all shows have been pretty much the same for quite some years already: a "singer" (just kind of lip-sync) dancer with a notorious outfit and the rest of the dancer crew in another outfit, all shows are dances in at least 90% of their duration which gets boring fast specially when you have seen them literally anywhere else, this along the pool closing really early (6pm) means that only few people can do something at night those being: heavy drinkers, dancers and gamblers (close during the pandemic though), watching TV might be an option but streaming services proved...I've always loved this hotel from the very first visit when I was a kid 6 months after its opening. The place is beautiful, the amount of bars and restaurants are reasonable and they serve from good to excellent food (*1) and decent to amazing cocktails (*2), the bedrooms are well packed and very clean, the receptionist are amazing at their job and they work with lot of empathy so do the bartenders and for the most part the staff in general are all nice and respectful. The pandemic response is very good(*3), the staff keeps reminding you to wear the mask in the places where is needed and there is antibacterial gel in most parts where contact is frequent. However if there is anything borderline bad, terrible or more appropriately said, mediocre is the entertainment, the pandemic isn't to blame here; all shows have been pretty much the same for quite some years already: a "singer" (just kind of lip-sync) dancer with a notorious outfit and the rest of the dancer crew in another outfit, all shows are dances in at least 90% of their duration which gets boring fast specially when you have seen them literally anywhere else, this along the pool closing really early (6pm) means that only few people can do something at night those being: heavy drinkers, dancers and gamblers (close during the pandemic though), watching TV might be an option but streaming services proved that TV ain't that entertaining either, so the nights are quite boring.

Side notes:
*1 : Riu chefs at the normal restaurants don't know how to cook pasta, the one time the spaghetti had any flavor was when they were basically mac'n'cheese the rest of the times they just didn't had any flavor whatsoever
*2: Despite the cocktails being amazing most of the times, I had quite the bit where they went ultraconservative on the alcohol, particularly few Mariachis I had from the Sport bar where nothing but ice, also on one Michelada they threw a spoon or two of salt in the beer, so the cocktails are kind of a gamble since some of the bartenders don't put enough effort even into the simplest cocktails
*3: The issues during the pandemic are minor, but the snacks on the Sport Bar were pathetic, just cheese and ham semi-sandwiches if you were lucky and mostly just nachos with cheese, they were clearly leftovers from lunch or dinner but I remember before the pandemic seeing that fridge almost always full of hamburgers, burritos, pizzas and a variety of sandwiches at all times of the day. Also the lack of information about the special restaurants was also very annoying as their schedules were either not planned or not informed.

Final thoughts: The hotel is still good, you can eat and drink very well but you should be prepared to either drink till sleep or do nothing till sleep as the nights just get exponentially boring.More