Tui Blue Manar - Hammamet, Tunisia 2024

Hey everyone! I know it has been many, many years since I last posted on here. I recently went on an All Inclusive holiday to Tunisia and as someone who has quite a few dietary intolerances (gluten, dairy, onion, garlic and walnuts) I wanted to share my experience in case it's helpful to someone else. Long story short, I had an amazing time on holiday and it was soooo nice to go somewhere where they could actually feed me. I ate very well and didn't go hungry once :)

Eating out with dietary requirements is always such a faff, let alone on holiday. Mum and I really fancied going all inclusive this year, and it's actually my first one since I've identified hopefully all of my intolerances (tbc) as we usually tend to do self catering instead.

I read somewhere that apparently the TUI BLUE range is good at catering to dietary requirements and intolerances so we thought we'd give that a try. I'm also part of some Facebook groups and have made a note of other recommendations for the future, and apparently Tenerife is very good at gluten and dairy free - maybe one to try next year!

We looked through the Tui Blue range, there aren't loads and loads to choose from and they all looked quite nice. We'd never been to Tunisia and we liked the look of the palm trees so we went there. I then emailed the hotel to let them know when we were planning to visit and notified them of my intolerances, and they let me know that Miss Nourra (sooo lovely and helpful!) would be there to meet us and to help us speak with the head chef and assistant head chef directly. Everyone was really nice and I didn't feel like a huge burden or massive inconvenience (looking at you onion and garlic!) and they assured me that they could point out what was okay for me to eat, and if there wasn't anything or I preferred something else they could make something fresh and it wouldn't be a problem.

Breakfast

I would say that Breakfast perhaps had the least amount of options, which I didn't mind too much as I'm not a big breakfast eater. At home I tend to have a late breakfast around 10:30am so eating loads at 8am before heading out to sunbathe wasn't high on my list. I was happy to have eggs some days or just fruit on others. They didn't have any gluten free bread, or GF/DF cereal. In hindsight, I did think about bringing a loaf of bread with me and decided not to, but I was fine without it in the end. They had every variation of eggs you could think of, I had an omelette with tomatoes, peppers, and parsley, had poached eggs a few times and a couple of times they also had smoked salmon, and then they had lots of fresh salad so I usually had lettuce, tomato, cucumber and shredded carrot. I do prefer to have toast or corn/rice cakes if I'm eating eggs but it was fine with lots of salad. For fruit they had apples, peaches, plums, dates, and grapefruit for breakfast - I tended to go for peaches and plums.

For milk, I think they had different versions of normal milk as well as soya milk. 

For non-dietary people that had loaads of options at every meal, at breakfast they had a full spread of every pastry and type of bread you could think of, as well as a pancake/crepe station. The usual English breakfast station, and loads of cold cuts of ham and cheese etc. I'd walk past the pastries and cry inside haha!

Lunch and Dinner

I ate so much at lunch and dinner, and it was very clean eating. I'd say there were about 5 or so stations where they cooked and grilled fresh and you'd line up and take some food. I always find food that's grilled really tasty anyway so it worked really well for me. Usually, I'd have a little walk around and see what food options they had, before finding the two main chefs, and they'd either let me know which stations were suitable, or they asked me what I'd like to eat. Over the seven days I had lamb, beef, chicken, quite a few different fish, and giant prawns and squid. And then either rice/chips/roast potatoes, grilled vegetables such as aubergines, tomatoes, courgettes, and then a side salad. 

There was lots of food available, and a wide range of foods too including freshly grilled meat, fish and seafood, cooked meals, rice, couscous, pastas, wraps, pizza, and there were some separate vegan, and vegetarian options too plus more. 

As far as I could tell I couldn't have any desserts as they contained gluten and/or dairy, and I don't think there was any sorbet (although I didn't ask - from looking they looked like dairy ice-creams). I was expecting this as I don't tend to find desserts in the UK easily anyway, so had fruit for dessert. Some evenings they had pineapple, they didn't have any grapes, oranges, melon or watermelon - perhaps it's not in season in September.

My mum said the cakes were really nice, especially the chocolate ones, and so she had dessert on my behalf too :)

There was an a la carte restuarant - BAIA - where you could visit once for free as part of your stay which we didn't end up trying. I figured it was easier to stick with the chefs that knew me well at this point although I'm sure they would have been able to create something suitable there too.

Snack Bar

There was also a snack bar, sandwich bar, and tea and cakes which we didn't try. I'm not sure if they had anything that catered to different dietary intolerances - I assumed it would be more like pizza, burgers, wings, chips etc. Also we were so full from our meals that we didn't want to check - towards the end of the holiday it felt like all we did was eat, sunbathe, read and sleep - perfect haha!

The Hotel

The hotel and resort itself was really nice. The landscaping and gardens were perfect. You could tell they really took care of everything, I don't think we saw a single weed or leaf out of place. Gardeners were constantly watering everything and keeping everything thriving. All of the staff were soooo friendly, respectful and professional. And very proactive in helping you if you needed anything and anticipating your needs before you even asked. We felt very safe and comfortable.

There were loads of activities which we probably could have made better use of - I tried archery which was hard but good fun. There was a daily programme which often included yoga, pilates, aqua aerobics, volleyball etc, and lots of activities for kids. In the evenings, in the amphitheater at the front of the resort there would be shows for kids and for everyone, and on some evenings they had performers that came in specially for the evening. There was a big stage and good music, and the sound didn't carry so you couldn't hear anything if you were sitting in the hotel lobby or on the terraces etc.

There were 4 pools, and it was on the beach. Fresh towels were included which was really handy. There was also basketball, tennis, paddle courts and table tennis.

Celebrations

My mum's birthday was during our stay. I let Miss Nourra know and she arranged for our room to be decorated which was so sweet and we booked a special dinner on the pool. This is often accompanied by chocolate or vanilla cake (for an extra £15-20 I think) but I thought best not to let mum eat a whole cake by herself haha!

Old Medina of Hammamet

We only went on one little trip in the end and that was to visit Old Hammamet. We took a taxi which was ~£5 maybe each way, and explored for a couple of hours before getting a taxi back. I can't walk for too long so this worked really well for us. There were quite a few trips available through the Tui reps but we didn't end up trying any. If we'd stayed for longer we would have explored more :)

Overall, we had a really nice time. We went during the first week of September, the weather was so nice and warm. There was a thunderstorm one evening during dinner but it stopped afterwards. As someone who is always cold, always wears a cardigan, and wears fluffy socks to bed most of the year the weather was great and I didn't wear a cardigan in the evening once. The resort was really nice, as were the staff and people, there was loads of food, they catered to my dietary intolerances really well. It was a really nice visit and I would go again :)

Have you been to Tunisia before? Or to Tui Blue Manar? Also, let me know if you know other resorts that are good with dietary intolerances so I can add them to my list! :)

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