Algarve family holiday with Jet2: Five days in Alvor

*Ad. Jet2holidays sent us on an all-inclusive trip to the Algarve for October half term. As always, my opinions are my own.

We flew out to the Algarve at the end of October half term and it was still hitting 26°C, which for that time of year felt like we’d got away with something! The locals kept telling us how pleased they were with it too.

My eldest spent most of his time in the Atlantic, getting knocked about by the waves and loving every second. It was cold, and it was rough and he couldn’t have cared less.

An Algarve family holiday works in October half term, often better than it does in August. Base yourself in the western Algarve rather than on one of the big resort strips if you want beaches and a working town instead of a row of bars. And if you’d rather not think about transfers, luggage limits or hire cars, a package is well worth it.

We went in late October with Jet2 Holidays, stayed all-inclusive at the Tivoli Alvor Algarve Resort with our two boys, and this is what it was actually like.

Why we chose the Algarve for half term

Three hours in the air, no time difference, and a good chance of sun at the end of October. When you’re going away with two kids in half term, that’s a lot of boxes ticked before you’ve even looked at hotels.

It’s easy once you’re there, too. The beaches are wide and sandy rather than shingle, everyone speaks English, and nobody bats an eyelid when you turn up for dinner at six because the boys are starving.

Why we’d never flown with Jet2 before

The reason was simple enough. They didn’t fly from Gatwick, which is our local airport, and getting over to Stansted from our corner of London is a trek before you’ve even checked in, so we always ended up booking with somebody else.

That changed in 2026, when Jet2 started flying out of London Gatwick with Faro in the winter schedule, which is how we came to be on this trip at all.

If Gatwick is your closest airport too, then it’s worth a look at the current list of Jet2 flights from London Gatwick before you book anything else, because the route map has grown quickly.

What you actually get with a Jet2holidays package

We’ve done plenty of package holidays over the years, but this is the first one where I actually felt we were looked after from the start of our trip to our return home.

Every person on the booking gets 22kg of hold luggage and 10kg of hand luggage as standard, which for four of us was more room than we needed. Shared return transfers from Faro to the hotel are included in the price – we went for private transfers which you can add to your package. The whole booking is ABTA and ATOL protected, deposits start at £60 per person, and free child places run across the year on their family holidays.

In practice that meant I picked a hotel, picked flight times that suited us, and then stopped thinking about it until it was time to pack. No separate transfer to arrange at the other end, no weighing cabin bags, and no car hire desk to find when we landed.

Flying to Faro from London Gatwick

Bag drop was the first surprise. Staff in red Jet2 T-shirts were standing out in front of the kiosks rather than behind a desk, so there was always somebody to catch your eye rather than a queue to join. It was the week of Halloween and they had put decorations up around the bag-drop area.

Jet2 run flights to Faro, The Algarve from Gatwick through the winter now, and the flight time is around three hours.

What I noticed on board, and then noticed again on the way home, was that there was always a crew member standing in the aisle, not doing a trolley run, just visible. With two children and a tray of drinks, that matters far more than it sounds.

Faro was the same, with Jet2 staff posted at the baggage carousel pointing people towards their transfers, so we walked out of arrivals without once having to stop and read a sign, and our private transfer was sitting there waiting when we got outside. I’ve done enough airport arrivals with tired children to know how rare that is.

Where we stayed: The Tivoli Alvor Algarve Resort

We stayed at the Tivoli Alvor Algarve Resort with Jet2holidays, a large all-inclusive resort about 45 minutes from Faro airport and a 15-minute walk from Praia dos Três Irmãos. There are two board levels, All Inclusive and All Inclusive Plus, and the difference is mainly branded spirits.

What there is to do at the resort

We had a deluxe family room, which took two adults and two boys without anyone having to climb over a suitcase to reach the bathroom, so plenty of space, and robes, and we’d been put in a quieter wing near the wellness centre.

There are five outdoor pools, an indoor swimming pool and a splash park, and they’re not really interchangeable. The main pools are where the animation team works, with the music on and a lot of children in the water, while one of the outdoor pools is freshwater and adult-only. All of them are heated and in late October they were still cold, which the boys didn’t care about in the slightest, though I only got in once (and once was enough).

The wellness centre has a sauna, Turkish bath and whirlpool. It’s over 16s only and runs 8.30am to 7pm, so it’s somewhere one parent goes while the other is on pool duty.

For the children, there’s mini golf, a table tennis table, a padel court and a football pitch, plus a baby and toddler pool with little slides beside the Pluma Junior Club kids club. We played mini golf more times than I can count and had a go at the table tennis and the padel. My eldest made more friends in five days on the football pitch than he manages in a whole term! We never used the kids club, so I can’t tell you whether it’s any good.

That was the part I hadn’t expected. These are outdoor activities that work for the whole family at once, and for kids of all ages, rather than somewhere to park the children for an hour.

Eating at the resort

The main buffet is Essenze and it’s open every day, and then there are three à la carte restaurants you have to book, Carosello for Italian, Roastic for steak and Mad Med for Mediterranean.

Worth knowing before you go, Mad Med only opens seasonally and was shut for the whole five days we were there, so don’t build your week around it if you’re travelling outside the summer. The booking app didn’t work for us either, so we ended up asking reception to sort our reservations out, which they did without any fuss. If I went again I’d book the lot on arrival and not bother with the app at all.

We ate at Carosello and it was decent enough, and for lunch there’s Salty Bar doing burgers and that sort of thing, buffet style again. There was also ice cream available all day, which the boys found within about an hour of arriving and never once forgot where it was.

Over five days the food did get a bit samey, but there was plenty of choice and you wouldn’t go hungry.

There’s an entertainment tent near reception with live music and shows on every night and a bar inside it. We didn’t use it, because we’d rather spend an evening in the local restaurants in town. There’s a Jet2 representative who is available at the hotel, but we never needed to contact them.

Other Algarve resorts

Jet2 offer plenty of other Algarve hotels if this one isn’t your thing. In Alvor itself there’s the Pestana Dom João II Beach and Golf Resort, a four-star sitting directly on the beach with a kids club and a football pitch, and the Pestana Alvor Beach Villas Seaside Resort alongside it.

Further east at Olhos d’Água, near Praia da Falésia, Pine Cliffs sits in their Indulgent Escapes range. Their Algarve list also runs through Albufeira, Vilamoura, Carvoeiro, Praia da Rocha, Lagos, Tavira and Quinta do Lago, so there are accommodation options along most of the coast.

Golf at Pestana Alto

My husband and my eldest played 18 holes at Pestana Alto Golf, which sits just behind the hotel, and they both came back calling it the best day of the trip.

It’s a par 72 and the last course Sir Henry Cotton designed, running through two valleys of surrounding countryside, with a par 5 on the 16th that gets talked about as one of the longest holes in Europe. The clubhouse has panoramic views over the third fairway, and they finished there with a big club sandwich (I heard about it in some detail).

Alvor is ringed by golf courses, with Penina and the other Pestana courses all nearby, so it works as a base if somebody wants more than one round.

Getting from the resort into Alvor town

Most of the family activities are on site, so this is what I’d have wanted to know before booking.

The hotel runs a free shuttle into the town centre, a little road train, on the hour every hour.

The catch is that it fills up. Arrive on the hour and there’s a fair chance you won’t get a seat (turning up bang on time is how you end up waiting for the next one). Get there 15 minutes before it leaves, at the hotel end and at the Alvor end, or settle in for the next one.

Which is why we ended up in taxis most of the time. A ride into town is only about £3 to £4, Uber works, and not having to build the evening around an hourly timetable was worth every penny.

Alvor itself, and why we’ll return

Alvor is the reason we’ll return, and it deserves more space than I can give it here, so I’m writing it up on its own.

It’s a working fishing town with a harbour, a grid of narrow streets full of small restaurants, and a long beach that runs east into Praia dos Três Irmãos. You can walk about 7km of golden sands without leaving it, and the rock formations and double arch at the Três Irmãos end are worth the walk. It really is beautiful here.

Behind the beach there’s a boardwalk of around 6km crossing the dunes and salt marsh of the Ria de Alvor. It’s flat, so it works with a pushchair or tired legs, and there’s a lot of birdlife on it. The beach is set up for water sports as well, with kitesurfing, windsurfing and kayaking all running off it.

The reason we kept heading back into town was the old town itself, which is where you’ll find most of the restaurants.

Where we ate

The best meal we had was at Adega d’Alvor on Rua Marquês de Pombal, which was a winery before it became a restaurant and still looks the part inside. The boys demolished piri piri chicken while my husband had seafood pasta and I had garlic prawns and octopus that I’m still thinking about now, and the bill came to far less than I’d expected given how busy the place was.

We also ate at the Yacht Club, which did excellent burgers and was exactly what we needed on the night nobody could face another plate of fish, and in between all of that we made our way through a fair few of the gelato shops (purely in the interests of research). There were plenty of other places we’d have liked to try and simply ran out of days for, which is part of why we want to go back.

The one that surprised us was Caniço, over at Prainha on Praia dos Três Irmãos, which is cut into the cliff face and looks straight out across the cove to the sea. We didn’t eat in the seafood restaurant, which felt a little too fancy with the boys in tow, but the bar down at beach level was somewhere we were very happy to sit with a cold drink and a snack and take in the view.

We came at it from the beach side, which I wouldn’t recommend if anyone in your group has mobility issues. There’s also a lift that runs down through the rock from the clifftop above, so that’s the way in if the beach route won’t work for you.

Beaches and days out a short drive away

We didn’t hire a car as we were short on time, but a car widens your options considerably. Next time, it will be top of our list.

Praia da Rocha, the big resort beach over at Portimão, is about 10 minutes away; Portimão itself is 15, and Lagos, where the sea stacks and arches of Ponta da Piedade sit below the lighthouse, is about half an hour west.

Boat trips to the Benagil sea cave leave from Portimão, Carvoeiro and Benagil itself. Worth knowing before you book, the rules have changed. Swimming to the cave was banned in 2023, and since August 2024 you can only go in on a licensed boat or a guided kayak or paddleboard tour.

Nobody disembarks onto the sand inside, and boats are held to a couple of minutes in the chamber – have your camera ready. It’s still worth doing, as long as you book it knowing that.

Zoomarine at Guia is the big theme park on this stretch of the Algarve coast, and there are water parks across the central Algarve too. The 2026 season ran from 12 March to 28 November, with adult tickets from around €28.90 online in low season and €34.90 from June to September. Children under a metre tall go free. One thing to check first, stay seven nights or more at the Tivoli and a day pass to Zoomarine, Slide & Splash or Zoo de Lagos is included, so don’t buy tickets before you ask.

The Algarve runs a long way, from the western Algarve around Alvor and Lagos across to the eastern Algarve near the Spanish border, so it’s worth working out which corner of southern Portugal suits you before you book anything.

The best time for an Algarve family holiday

October half term worked so well for us that I’d do it again, but don’t take our weather as a given.

Alvor averages around 22°C in October, with seven hours of sunshine a day. We got 26°C, which wasn’t normal. Portugal had just come off its hottest September on record, the warm spell held through the end of the month, and forecasters were talking about 29°C in the south in the final week.

So don’t count on 26°C, but do plan on low twenties and beach days that work, and treat anything warmer than that as a bonus.

The sea is a different story to the air, and the Atlantic Ocean off the Algarve averages about 19°C in October, with ours rough as well as cold, though my eldest was in it regardless. If your children need warm water, then you’ll be building sandcastles instead, and that’s no bad thing in October.

July and August will give you the heat, along with high season prices, full car parks and booked-out restaurants. Every family I know who has tried both would take the shoulder season twice over.

What a delay taught me about booking with Jet2

The thing that actually sold me on Jet2 happened once the holiday was over. We’d had a very early start that morning, landed back at Gatwick at midday, and then stood at the carousel for over an hour because fog had thrown the airport out and there weren’t enough ground staff and baggage handlers to cope. People were getting restless, as you do when you’ve been up since the small hours and the children have run out of patience.

What was different was that three or four Jet2 staff stood there in the hall the whole time, explaining what had happened, going off to check and coming back with updates, and we had a text from Jet2 about the delay as well. None of it was in their control, and none of it got our bags out any faster, but I’ve stood in that same hall with other operators and had nobody at all to ask, and that’s exactly what you’re paying for on a package even though it’s the one thing you can’t see on a comparison site.

Is an Algarve family holiday with Jet2 worth it?

Yes, without any hesitation from me, because if you pick a hotel you like, then a half-term trip to the Algarve is about as easy as going abroad with children gets, with three hours in the air, no time difference, sun on the beach at the end of October and a region that’s thoroughly used to families.

Would we book with Jet2 again? Absolutely, and that isn’t something I say lightly. We’ve flown a lot of operators over the years, and I’ve never had one where somebody was simply there, visibly, at every point we might have needed them, whether that was in front of the bag drop at Gatwick, standing in the aisle on the plane, waiting by the carousel at Faro, sitting at a desk in the hotel lobby we never once had to use, or explaining a baggage delay at Gatwick that had nothing to do with them. That’s what you’re supposed to be buying with a package, and it’s the first time I’ve felt I actually got it.

The hotel is a separate decision, and it’s yours to make. There’s a long list of hotels in The Algarve in Jet2’s collection, so it’s worth spending time on that choice rather than taking the first all-inclusive you see.

Algarve family holiday FAQs

Is the Algarve good for a family holiday?

Yes. Flights from the UK are around three hours, there’s no time difference, the sandy beaches are wide rather than shingle, and the region is set up for children. The beautiful beaches are the draw, but the practical stuff is what makes it easy. The western Algarve around Alvor and Lagos suits families who want beaches and towns. Albufeira and Vilamoura suit those who want more on their doorstep.

When is the best time for an Algarve family holiday?

May to June and September to October. You get temperatures in the low to mid twenties, far smaller crowds and lower prices than the summer holidays. October half term worked well for us on land. The sea was cold and rough, so if swimming matters to your children, go in July or August instead.

How long is the flight to Faro from London Gatwick?

Around three hours. Jet2 began flying from Gatwick in March 2026 and Faro is in both the summer and winter schedules.

What’s included in a Jet2holidays package?

Return flights, accommodation, return hotel transfers, 22kg of hold luggage and 10kg of hand luggage per person. Bookings are ABTA and ATOL protected and deposits start at £60 per person. Infants get an extra 10kg added to an accompanying adult’s allowance.

Is the Tivoli Alvor Algarve Resort good for children?

There’s plenty for them to do. Alongside five outdoor pools, an indoor pool and a splash park, there’s mini golf, a table tennis table, a padel court, a football pitch, a baby and toddler pool with small slides, and the Pluma Junior Club kids club. It’s a 15-minute walk to Praia dos Três Irmãos. We didn’t use the kids’ club, but the activities kept our two busy for five days. The main pools are lively and were still cold in late October, and the spa is over-16s only.

How do you get from the Tivoli Alvor into Alvor town?

The hotel runs a free shuttle train on the hour every hour. It gets full, so arrive 15 minutes before departure at either end. A taxi or Uber into town costs around £3 to £4, which is what we ended up using most of the time.

Can you still swim into Benagil Cave?

No. Swimming to the cave was banned in 2023 after several drownings, and since August 2024 the only legal way in is on a licensed boat tour or a guided kayak or paddleboard trip. You can’t get out onto the beach inside the cave, and boats are limited to a couple of minutes in the chamber.

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• Best restaurants in Lisbon, where to eat guide
• A guide to the best things to do in Lisbon
• The best day trips from Lisbon