colpuck

I’m just finishing up a one-night stay here, and I’m posting a review.

Location.

The hotel itself is located in a central area of the city within walking distance of the yellow and red metro lines and is one stop on the yellow line away from the blue line. It is also two blocks from the Lisbon Sheraton. If location is all you care about this place is pretty good.

Comfort

I like a good bed. I can’t stand the rock hard foam beds that are popular in other EU Hilton properties. While this bed is an innerspring mattress, it has seen some mileage and needs to be replaced. While somewhat more comfortable than other EU standard beds I still prefer the US style bed.

Room

The whole hotel has a “W”esque hip minimalist vibe going on and that extends into the rooms. First, I don’t think the hotel has suites and it definitely doesn’t have a lounge. As a diamond I got upgraded to a “superior” room. There was 2 1.5L bottles of water in the room, but no bottle opener to pop the cap. I used my teeth. They put concrete linoleum on all of surfaces in the room. I’m not too sure what is going on with that. The TV is way too small for the room. It’s a 20inch TV when the wall it is on demands a 32inch or larger TV. The bathroom is blacked out with a one-way mirror built into the shower. I think that is supposed to be “sexy.” The desk chair is this cheap plastic Ikea thing, so if you’re planning on working in the room look elsewhere. The heat didn’t really work that well, so I thought the room stayed cold during the night. Then again I like it at 79f/27c so I’m weird like that.

Amenities

The hotel provided at least in the superior room a full Doubletree amenity set. It is the same product set would get in a US Doubletree. I like them, so I am cool with that. Breakfast was a pretty standard European breakfast. They did provide everything for a full English, but not much more than that. This Gold/Diamond breakfast compares pretty similarly to a US Hilton/DT that does provide a full breakfast but with a few more cold cuts and cheese. It doesn’t come close to the Asian Conrads I’ve stayed in or the Stockholm Hilton, which I consider to be the gold standard for hotel breakfasts. There was nothing cooked to order. Room service looked decent and reasonably priced. I didn’t order any room service.

Wi-Fi

Wifi is spotty. My room was at the end of the hall and the wifi barely worked from the bed and not at all from the desk. If you’re looking to do serious work on the internet look somewhere else or back up frequently because the connection drops pretty regularly. For speed I couldn’t get a youtube video at the lowest quality to run smoothly.

Overall

It’s a nice hotel with big rooms (US Standard). The staff was great and the food was passable. However, the whole place has this feeling of cheapness about it. For 59 Euro a night there is nothing to complain about. If I was paying anything over 100 Euro a night, I might have been disappointed. Graded against other US properties it’s a meh and runs in the pack. Against other EU properties it’s pretty good, but it needs a better desk setup and a better breakfast.