Troia Design Hotel

Visited on a golf trip - excellent friendly service. Rooms were clean and very spacious. Breakfast was excellent and set me up for the day. The pool area was very welcome after a hot day on the course - as was the bar. Very friendly attentive staff made the stay relaxing and enjoyable.

Very nicely located hotel about one hour/100€ taxi from the airport. The area has a fantastic beach and an international excellent casino with walkthrough directly from the hotel. A few good restaurant's and bars along the dock. If you need more take the 15 minutes katamaran to Setobal, across the channel. A very nice golf course next door. During low tide you can walk out on the sand island, out in the Atlantic. A dolphin family swims along the coast and into the channel regularly, showing just how clean the waters are. Walking distance to the supermarket selling everything you forgot. Also a nice Lacoste store, if you forgot any clothing. The hotel has spa, Indoor and outdoor pools. Unfortunately the gym is super small, with only few equipment options, should be expanded. With 4-5 guests in there, it's basically crowded every morning. The breakfast is excellent served between 7-11 everyday. Don't miss it. An omelette station tops it off. And ask for your favorite coffee you won't be disappointed. Rooms are super clean with great balconies. One minus is the shower cabin which is super slippery after a day with suntan lotion. Another problem is the elevators that seem to have problems running most of the days.

I was very disappointed. I was really looking forward to it. I went to the spa, and the massage table was extremely hard, they didn’t have a cushion for your face to rest on when you lie against your belly on the table. Typically high-end spas have a cushion that I find a little bit hard at times but in this place, it’s completely inexistent just a few folded towels for you to put your face on. It was literally hurting my face and so bad that I had to flip around and only get a front body massage. The massage therapist herself was not bad, but not particularly good either she never checked in with me to ask me if I wanted more or less pressure or anything like this. The air conditioning was blasting. It was so cold that I had to ask her to stop it. I can’t think of anyone wanting a room temperature of 21° when completely naked and still. I know these old details and easy fixable, but it’s just to give you an overview of how little the person who designed the experience actually cares about the experience because for me they should be proud of the standard operating procedure. Do not turn on air conditioning or if you do so just make sure it is maintained at a certain temperature to make guests comfortable. When I got into the shower after my massage, there was a towel that was blocking the drain, which means that as soon as I dipped my feet into the shower, I was dipping into someone else’s shower water. It felt disgusting to say the least. The dry sauna was very clean and hot, which was perfect, I did not try to steam room because it’s not my thing however, I tried the inside pool. The temperature was perfect, the only thing I did not particularly like in the spa, is that it really feels like a public inside swimming pool, very far from a premium experience. You can see that the maintenance hasn’t been done for a while and things just stopped to fall apart. Then when I go to my room, I wanted to order some food because I was super hungry and I called the room service since the restaurant was closed at 6 PM. Room service asked me what my order was and I said well where is the menu and they said you have to turn on the TV to find the menu which I tried to and the TV wouldn’t work so I asked them can you please tell me what you have on the menu or Where can I find the menu? I didn’t have an electronic way to sending me the menu so I had to wait for one of them to come up here with a physical hard copy of the menu, which took them 20 minutes to get me. Now I’m not saying that I would never return to this place but at least I know what to expect. A friend of mine had told me how amazing it was and I am really not impressed. I will probably try to look for a special deal but not paying €250 a night for this, and definitely not €150 for a massage which was more painful than restful. I have to say, however, that most staff members were really nice, helpful and polite. However, you can see at the reception that they are completely overwhelmed. They don’t have enough people to deal with people’s requests. After all, it’s just Portuguese hotel so you can expect a five star treatment, even in a five star hotel. I love Portugal. I live here, but the level of service. Isn’t there in most places, which is insane when you pay the same price for the stuff as you do in Dubai.