The Oitavos

Came here for a couple of nights to play at the golf course. I spent a little more to get a Corner Sea Loft room which was great as it had a wrap around balcony with a massive amount of space, sun loungers etc and a full sea view. Other rooms I thought were strangely positioned and look to have small balconies and side views. Worth upgrading your room here I would say. First impressions, a super cool hotel. Very minimalistic and I can see why some reviewers would not like it all. I loved it though. Walking to my room for the first time was so cool. A huge wide long corridor with just one window at the very end looking straight out to sea. The closer you get the bigger this window gets. Like a really cool art gallery or something you would find in The Tate Modern. My room was enormous and excellent. Only issue was sound from above very audible. High heels, footsteps, scraping furniture etc. Surprised that happens in a newish built modern structure like this. Public areas a wee bit sterile for me. The bar seemed to be part of the restaurant and I wasnt comfortable sitting at it, which is something I always do in a Hotel. For a cool Hotel, they should have a better bar. Dinner was lovely, with an exceptional and knowledgeable sommelier who made super pairings. Staff were absolutely brilliant throughout. Very friendly and helpful and dressed immaculately. The only thing I did not like here was the breakfast. A let down and poor. One juice (concentrate?) no butter for toast, filter coffee (yuk) and a poor coffee machine that appeared to make espresso only. Eggs to order but little information on options? Omelettes? who knows. I got two poached eggs. Both came hard boiled, and had to be eaten with dry toast as no butter available. I didn't even bother with breakfast the day I left as its so poor. Seemed to be lots of cold meats and cheese about if thats your thing, it's not mine early in the morning. Cold cheese for breakfast is all wrong :-)

The staff was super nice extremely friendly and highly accommodating. The hotel itself wasn’t a 5 star hotel at least as ranked alongside a North American standard or even France or England. At a 5star attention to detail is what is measured because the basics are covered otherwise they would be a 3 or 4 star. During every breakfast they ran out of coffee at the coffee station, normally not a big deal but then it would take 10-15 min to bring a new coffee pot. The self serve espresso machine was only half functional, the bread oven was not working a couple days, bowls for the cereal bar where scarce running out multiple times leaving people searching around thinking they just couldn’t see them when in fact they had just run out 10min ago and nobody replaced them. I’m using the breakfast example to exemplify my total experience across multiple interactions. I happened to be there during a very windy and rainy few days. Again, staff was very friendly but the physical property to me, the entire hotel including my room felt very sterile.