Villa Doris Suites

“Beautiful, refreshingly clean, modern rooms. ”

We were very impressed with the beautiful, and refreshingly clean, modern rooms - which were fitted with aircon, full-sized fridge and freezer, oven, microwave, and dishwasher. Cutlery, kettle, pots, plates, cups etc. Also, a hairdryer, clothes rack, mop and broom - although sadly no washing mac... more

We were very impressed with the beautiful, and refreshingly clean, modern rooms - which were fitted with aircon, full-sized fridge and freezer, oven, microwave, and dishwasher. Cutlery, kettle, pots, plates, cups etc. Also, a hairdryer, clothes rack, mop and broom - although sadly no washing machine, not that we expected one. The only real criticism with the apartment was that the toilet seemed loose and not fitted properly, so would move when used, but nothing resulted in this happening, so not a big problem. The hotel is situated right next to an abandoned and run-down hotel - fortunately, we didn't experience any issues, but it's covered in graffiti where people break into it so we were worried about issues at night - but we didn't experience any. The main issue we had with the hotel, which turned out to not be a real issue, was that we didn't know how to check out. The checkout time is "by 12pm" (actually the paperwork says by 12am which led to separate panic), but due to the flight and travel time we had to leave before 9am - however, the hotel is unstaffed until 12pm. We got up early and were in a panic about how to get to another hotel they own and back with our luggage to get to the hourly bus on time to make our flight as we didn't see how to checkout with no reception in our hotel. I wanted to call them but their other hotel's reception wasn't manned before 9am so by the time they'd be able to respond we wouldn't have had time to get to their other hotel, checkout, and get back. Fortunately, the panic was unnecessary as once I got through to someone at their other reception, they assured us we could just leave the keycard in the room and go. I just wish this was mentioned to us on check-in, and also on the papers they gave us in the room. Overall we were very happy with our stay in Villa Doris Suites, it was the cleanest hotel we've stayed in for a few years, and the proximity to some of the most beautiful beaches in algarve was fantastic. One other thing I'll mention is - transport to and from the hotel is awful - this obviously isn't the fault of the hotel. It took us around 4 hours to get from Faro Aeroport to the hotel - more than the flight to Portugal - and longer on the way back. On the way back to the aeroport from the hotel, we tried a bus outside the hotel which didn't show up to us when planning the journeys with Google Maps - which again only came once an hour. This took us to Lagos bus station (wish we took it on the arrival journey!) from which you take an ALSA coach for a couple of hours to the aeroport. There's also meant to be a train there that does the same trip surprisingly for the same length of time, and even more infrequently (no train between 12 and 4pm) - but this didn't seem to be running for our entire holiday and never showed up as a possible journey with our Google Maps planning. We researched the ALSA coach from lagos to faro, the website explicitly details that you can buy tickets on board, but after arriving we were told it was preorder only, and that the website is wrong and it would not be possible to book a ticket for today. We ended up waiting another hour for a different bus for another route, and only just caught our flight in time, despite giving ourselves 4 whole hours for the journey. It's obviously not the hotel's fault for this poor transport, so it does not factor into the actual review score, but I suggest the staff recommend transport to the aeroport, or mention the fact there was a private shuttle bus that could be booked directly to the aeroport which we read about after the fact. I can see many people missing flights trying to get to the aeroport in time if they don't anticipate the poor transport options. Again, overall we were very happy with our stay in Villa Doris Suites and would recommend staying there.

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