Find the Cheap Vila Nova Hotels

Dear Duecitania owners, Your hotel is magnificent and I LOVE it. The architecture, the details, the workmanship are superb. Your natural pool and surroundings are stunning, and, very importantly, your staff are lovely, nice, helpful. Ah yeah, also the spa! Unfortunately, you need to look for another chef and another maintenance manager. Why change them? Because food and hospitality require love: love of taste, love of detail, love of choice, love of attention to detail. Because maintenance needs love for things that work, are clean, have square angles where required. And the love is lacking in the food and in the maintenance. 1. We arrive in our room on the 3rd floor; the wifi is abysmal, the fridge does not work, the water pressure is miserable, and the towel racks need to be tightened and squared up. And in the spa, the barrier to walk down into the jacuzzi must be put back in, the sauna and the vienne shower are still not working since last time we came. Also, can men with long feet have appropriate slippers? Your maintenance manager (if you have one) does not walk around looking at what works and does not work. And does not teach your staff to do the same and tell him or her “hey the towel rack in room 314 needs tightening “. There is no love. 2. For a place like the Duecitania, the menu is really poor. And the quality of the food average. The cheeses/sausages in the mixed platter do not honour the richness available in Portugal, the chicken in the (very small) Cesar salad is sad and dry. The bread of the hamburgers equals in quality what is found at McDo. When we arrive at breakfast, there is no brown bread. Yes, it comes just later. But why do we have to wait? Same with the bacon.. arrives later. And why have to ask the staff to cut the grapes bunches into manageable sizes? Here as well, the chef does not care and does not teach the staff how a well managed restaurant runs. No love. So, please, get your act together. It is not difficult, if you have the love.

There is such to commend this hotel: the setting in the old part of Lousã, the building which was a former palace, the gardens and pools, the views overlooking the forested hills, the breakfast and the period rooms. But what makes this place more than excellent is the quality of the people who work there, we never encountered anyone front office or back office who wasn't welcoming, pleasant and helpful. There are some things to be aware of: the hotel is a former palace which makes the public spaces more than you might expect but some of the rooms, though well equipped can be small. But I would definitely return. TJ

I visited Portugal on a group tour that included stays at three pousadas. A big takeaway from my experience is that pousadas are remarkably variable. Pousada Mosteiro de Guimaraes was fantastic, and Pousada Castelo Palmela was okay but with some flaws. However, this one, Conimbriga Hotel Do Paço, was abysmal. I recommend you choose your pousada carefully; some are great, but some, such as this one, are bad beyond belief. The hotel itself is nothing special, and a massive disappointment after the delight of the first pousada I visited, Pousada Mosteiro de Guimaraes. This pousada claims to be originally a ‘manor house’, but it just looks like a tatty old house that’s had tacky modern hotel features crudely appended. Tattiness and dirtiness were everywhere. My room was the type that motivates me to avoid touching anything I don’t need to; surfaces were not clean. However, the bed linen was okay, as was the bed. Lots of insects were attracted by the needlessly bright modern garden lights, and doors and windows were left open so they could get inside. Even my hotel key was disgusting: the tag attached to it had an old sticky label which was partly worn away, and its glue residue was holding the accumulated dirt and pocket fluff of innumerable previous guests. Presumably, no one at the hotel could be bothered to clean it. It rather sums up the hotel. Dinner was awful. The dining room’s maître d' was badly dressed in a shabby polo shirt and casual trousers; he looked like it was his job to clean toilets, not greet diners. I was brought soup, and had to request a spoon with which to eat it. Service for me was slow, but I got luckier than my fellow diners – some were waiting two hours for food. I was fortunate enough to have other dining arrangements for my second night in this hotel; some of my fellow diners who did not returned to the hotel with food from grocery stores rather than endure the same dining experience for a second time. Breakfast was also awful. The floor of the breakfast room was wet and slippery, I had to request that it be dried. I also had to request that lights were turned on in the breakfast room, which was dark. Scrambled eggs were strangely lumpy. The toaster was of an impenetrable design. Coffee dispensers ran out of coffee half an hour after breakfast started.