We booked a 10 day stay at this hotel for our summer holiday. We had been to Portugal before, but this was our first visit to this area.
The area is very nice. The train station is only a short walk away, and from there you can go to Lisbon and nearby Cascais, which is a very nice place with lots of great restaurants. Estoril itself is a bit quiet with a limited selection of restaurants.
The hotel itself was a disappointment. We travel a great deal, and we always book 4 or 5 star hotels, but we have never seen anything like this.
The good things:
- The hotel building. Beautiful building and pool area.
- The kids club. Our little girl was delighted with the kids club.
The bad things:
- Our room. It was in desperate need of renovation. We booked a junior suite which was supposed to have a separate bedroom, but didnt, instead the bed and bathroom were on a separate floor. Tiles on the first floor were loose, and the interior in the living area was old and worn. On the second floor the carpet was seriously stained, and in one corner they had just put another carpet on top, just to hide the worst. The closets were unusable as they smelled, and several times during our stay water dripped from the aircondition into the closets.
- The pool. Didnt seem like there was a very good cleaning system for the pool. The pool attendants were scrubbing the pool bottom with long brooms and had a small pump on wheels that they used from time to time. There was also a small "canal" around the pool where the showers were placed. Water from the showers gathered here, and this water turned quite green before they removed the water and cleaned up.
Conclusion:
The hotel building, the area and the service was 5 star, but the pool area and our room was definitely not. And at the price we payed for our room it was a rip-off. I have never payed so much money for such a lousy standard. While there were some renovation work going on at the hotel, our entire wing had not been touched for ages.
If you plan on spending this much on a hotel, I would definitely spend it elsewhere.