Stayed here early december for a single night. First impressions were really good, but some cracks appeared during the stay.
We got in a bit early. Reception great, friendly folks, room not ready yet due to late checkout, but left our bags. I noticed in the app that we were upgraded from the booked city corner suite to their Lapa suite, and thanked the lady behind the desk for the upgrade, which was acknowledged.
Returned a couple of hours later and got our keys to the room (1209). When entering the room, found out that we were downgraded again to the originally booked room type, the city corner suite. Sure, upgrades are not guaranteed, but making someone happy with an upgrade first, just to downgrade them a couple of hours later with no notice or explanation is not the best recipe for a happy customer. Found out later that they gave the upgraded room away to someone else while we were out.
As for the room: furnishings are all nice, but the city corner suite layout is quite impractical. The room consists of 2 area's (on the small side) with the bathroom and hallway in the middle. There is a large dining table for 6 people in the first half of the room, which is on the large side for the area, making it feel smal. Large TV there, but no comfortable seating, just the 6 dining table chairs. The other half of the room is the bedroom, rounded on the far end to follow the building curvature, with just the bed, no seating. Small (37" or something) TV. IMHO, I would swap out the dining table for a comfortable seating area and desk. It's a room for 2, so I really don't see any benefit to a large 6-person dining table.
We got the lowest floor city corner suite. Windows adjacent to the streets, with cars parked right up to the bedroom windows (and containers with trash standing right outside):
We had some noise during the night from people walking rtight past the windows and cars leaving/parking.
Large dining table in first half of the room:
Bedroom:
Bathroom, toilet side.
Bathroom was nice and new, but I did truly miss the bidet which seems to be so standard in Portugal. Nothing to grab onto in toilet while seating and standing up (don't forget, htere are loads of people with lower back issues who'd really appreciate just something to hold onto!)
The electrical installation/switching layout in the room is a disaster. I truly like hotels that go the extra mile and put in a KNX installation for lighting control instead of using classical switching. The possibilities are limitless and it's the base for a truly smart room. But hotelliers: please hire an installer that knows what he is doing and can design a logical system! You want anyone who walks into the room to operate the lighting and find their way around without thinking or needing a manual. The installer/designer that you hired clearly missed the mark, both in switch selection, logic design, switch location, etc. I'd reckon that after a week in this room, most folks still wouldn't know what buttons to press to turn on the lights or set the temperature.
There are 6-fold switches everywhere - that's way too many functions!. At the entry door, a insane number of 12 seperate switching functions is present. Who ever thought that would be a good idea? And it's not even clear what each switch does: the incons/markings are very small and thus illegible. Most switchpads are located at 1m from the floor, which is a normal height for regular switches, but not for these KNX switching pads, At this height, it's impossible to read the (very small) markings on those switches without getting on your knees. Finally, it seemed that they randomly assigned functions to each switch, without any consideration for logic and flow through the room. I truly don't see a need to switch the bathroom lights at the entry door to the living area. Some lights are dimmable, but others are not, and it's not clear which. Each light is switched seperately, instead of using scenes. And while they have the infrastructure in place for simple features such as a PIR sensor and night lighting in the bathroom, none of those are present.
This installation is an example of how /not/ to do domotica/KNX.
The lower 6-fold switch near the entry door. There is another 4-fold switch 50cm above this one, with a thermostat screen. Font size for those markings is 7 or 8pt max.
Other than that, the rooms are good. Great beds, furnishings are nice, blackout curtains are fine, except for some light at the edges. Being right at street level and windows right next to the sidewalk made that feel a bit awkward though, as it would probably still be possible to get a peek inside
We received a welcome drink at the bar, which was good. If one drink isn't enough, there are more than enough nice cocktails available at reasonable prices and the bar staff is friendly. Did not eat at the hotel but went out on foot. No umbrella's available for guests unfortunately.
Breakfast was fine, but nothing to write home about. It's just a buffet, no made to order eggs.
As we had to leave for the airport at 1pm, I asked reception staff for an extra 45 minutes to an hour and was initially denied without any consideration. The new guests that were assigned our room where already there (and I assume were promised an early checkin). In the end, I got granted the extra hour, but it required an extra visit to reception, requesting to escalate and making it clear that it's quite unreasonable to have us to check in late so that the hotel can accomodate another guests late checkout (which we didn't really mind), only to deny us an extra hour at checkout ourselves the next day, even though being told it wouldn't be an issue at checkin. We ended up leaving at 12.15, only 15 minutes past the regular checkout time, as we were all done by then. The housekeeping lady at our floor was still working a couple of rooms down and in no hurry to clean our room.
In conclusion:
Property itsself is nice. Service is good for most staff, but can improve with others. No real diamond recognition, other than the welcome drink and standard breakast benefit. Breakfast could be improved by offering made to order eggs. Location is ok. A bit out of the city centre, but better than the Doubletree. 15 to 20 minute walk over to either downtown or Mercado da Ribeira, or just take a Uber, which are pretty cheap in Lisbon.