Pousada De Sao Tiago — Hotel in São Lourenço

I am a local resident and not a tourist; yet I don't recommend tourists to consider spending money buying such poor service from this hotel, although the hotel itself is indeed beautiful. Or, you don't expect any quality service!||||The staff are unprofessional and impolite - especially the reservation/front desk manager. The rude attitude and poor customer service had given my family and myself an unpleasure experiences and a poor impression of the hotel. We will not plan to spend a dime on it until I hear very good comments about it again in the future.||||I wrote a complaint e-Mail to their official email address 3 days prior to arrival and expected a reply. I BCC-ed my family on this email and they all received it. But upon arrival, they said they had never received the e-mail and they didn't bother double-checking the mail box in front of us and said it wasn't their problem.||||If you are interested to know about the details, you could refer to my email, which they had never received, for the whole story:||||----------------||To Whom It May Concern (reservation@saotiago.com.mo),|| ||As a follow-up of our phone conversation earlier and as agreed, I am writing to inform you that I will make an on-day (17-sept 2016) decision which option I will take as listed below:|| ||Option 1: Check-in hotel room and stay as booked||Option 2: Take photos at the Hotel Public Areas for three (3) hours||||||=Disappointing Customer Experience:||||I would like to take this opportunity to express my feelings towards this experience with the hotel regarding this occasion.|| ||||=Lack of Information on the Hotel Website:||||First I tried to look for information about photo-shooting at the hotel in the official website but I was unable to find any information about it. Therefore I only consulted a friend who had booked a room for her wedding big day and did her wedding photo-shooting on the same day, too.|| ||||=Inefficient English Communication Skills of Attendants||||Then, I tried to make a call to the hotel hotline and requested detailed information and spoke in English. An attendant replied me that the hotel offered wedding photo-shooting packages (which include photographer service and a number of photos) which I did not need. Therefore, I enquired if booking a hotel room would let me take wedding photos at the hotel with my own team of photographer and makeup artists. The attendant replied that I could do my own photo-shooting once a booking was made but she did not further explain to me there was any other additional hourly rate for the photo shooting etc.. Therefore I went ahead and made a room booking and fully paid with my credit card through an online agent and felt very excited about it.|| ||||=Inflexible Policies and Services||||Recent, a super typhoon was approaching and it was brought to my attention that I had to make some rearrangement with the hotel maybe checking-in on the 17-Sept as usual and just reschedule the photo shooting because the weather might be very bad for outdoor shooting. Therefore, I called the hotel and expected to receive a warm welcome and understanding that I could reschedule my photo-shooting as I have predicted that the weather is going to be really bad 3-4 days prior to my check-in date.|| ||Disappointingly, when I called the hotel and tried to reschedule, firstly, I was told that I had to make an additional payment (on hourly basis) for photo-shooting no matter I booked any room or not before. The more shocking part was that I was told I was not allowed to cancel my room booking and restart my the process in the “correct” way. After talking to Manager Mr. Wong for more than 15 minutes explaining the entire story, all I was told was that all their staff knew the policy well enough and would not provide wrong information to the guest in the first place. I told them to listen to the call records and also insisted that my purpose was to take photos but not staying in the room. Finally I was provided an “option” to either check-in the room or take photos without checking in the room on the day.|||| ||=Poor Customer Service||||I would like to state very clearly that the entire purpose for my booking was to take wedding photos at the hotel areas and I am not trying to take advantage of the hotel. However it seems that the hotel does not understand and is trying to blame me that I did not understand how the hotel operates. I do not see any loss or resources issue incurred with the hotel with changing the date with early notification; but I could see a loss of reputation of the hotel and loss of money trying to bet against the unstable weather.|| ||With this, I am looking forward to receiving a reply from the hotel as well as seeing improvements in the future.|| ||Please feel free to contact myself if you have any queries or questions.||||||Booking information:||Guest Name: XXX XXX XXX||Confirmation #: 101XXXXX||Check-in Date: 17-Sept-2016||Payment status: credit card payment - paid in full|||| ||Regards,||XXX XXX XXX||Contact Number:...

I am a local resident and not a tourist; yet I don't recommend tourists to consider spending money buying such poor service from this hotel, although the hotel itself is indeed beautiful. Or, you don't expect any quality service!||||The staff are unprofessional and impolite - especially the reservation/front desk manager. The rude attitude and poor customer service had given my family and myself an unpleasure experiences and a poor impression of the hotel. We will not plan to spend a dime on it until I hear very good comments about it again in the future.||||I wrote a complaint e-Mail to their official email address 3 days prior to arrival and expected a reply. I BCC-ed my family on this email and they all received it. But upon arrival, they said they had never received the e-mail and they didn't bother double-checking the mail box in front of us and said it wasn't their problem.||||If you are interested to know about the details, you could refer to my email, which they had never received, for the whole story:||||----------------||To Whom It May Concern (reservation@saotiago.com.mo),|| ||As a follow-up of our phone conversation earlier and as agreed, I am writing to inform you that I will make an on-day (17-sept 2016) decision which option I will take as listed below:|| ||Option 1: Check-in hotel room and stay as booked||Option 2: Take photos at the Hotel Public Areas for three (3) hours||||||=Disappointing Customer Experience:||||I would like to take this opportunity to express my feelings towards this experience with the hotel regarding this occasion.|| ||||=Lack of Information on the Hotel Website:||||First I tried to look for information about photo-shooting at the hotel in the official website but I was unable to find any information about it. Therefore I only consulted a friend who had booked a room for her wedding big day and did her wedding photo-shooting on the same day, too.|| ||||=Inefficient English Communication Skills of Attendants||||Then, I tried to make a call to the hotel hotline and requested detailed information and spoke in English. An attendant replied me that the hotel offered wedding photo-shooting packages (which include photographer service and a number of photos) which I did not need. Therefore, I enquired if booking a hotel room would let me take wedding photos at the hotel with my own team of photographer and makeup artists. The attendant replied that I could do my own photo-shooting once a booking was made but she did not further explain to me there was any other additional hourly rate for the photo shooting etc.. Therefore I went ahead and made a room booking and fully paid with my credit card through an online agent and felt very excited about it.|| ||||=Inflexible Policies and Services||||Recent, a super typhoon was approaching and it was brought to my attention that I had to make some rearrangement with the hotel maybe checking-in on the 17-Sept as usual and just reschedule the photo shooting because the weather might be very bad for outdoor shooting. Therefore, I called the hotel and expected to receive a warm welcome and understanding that I could reschedule my photo-shooting as I have predicted that the weather is going to be really bad 3-4 days prior to my check-in date.|| ||Disappointingly, when I called the hotel and tried to reschedule, firstly, I was told that I had to make an additional payment (on hourly basis) for photo-shooting no matter I booked any room or not before. The more shocking part was that I was told I was not allowed to cancel my room booking and restart my the process in the “correct” way. After talking to Manager Mr. Wong for more than 15 minutes explaining the entire story, all I was told was that all their staff knew the policy well enough and would not provide wrong information to the guest in the first place. I told them to listen to the call records and also insisted that my purpose was to take photos but not staying in the room. Finally I was provided an “option” to either check-in the room or take photos without checking in the room on the day.|||| ||=Poor Customer Service||||I would like to state very clearly that the entire purpose for my booking was to take wedding photos at the hotel areas and I am not trying to take advantage of the hotel. However it seems that the hotel does not understand and is trying to blame me that I did not understand how the hotel operates. I do not see any loss or resources issue incurred with the hotel with changing the date with early notification; but I could see a loss of reputation of the hotel and loss of money trying to bet against the unstable weather.|| ||With this, I am looking forward to receiving a reply from the hotel as well as seeing improvements in the future.|| ||Please feel free to contact myself if you have any queries or questions.||||||Booking information:||Guest Name: XXX XXX XXX||Confirmation #: 101XXXXX||Check-in Date: 17-Sept-2016||Payment status: credit card payment - paid in full|||| ||Regards,||XXX XXX XXX||Contact Number:...

I really agonized over whether I should write this review but I feel that I'd be remiss and doing all potential travelers a disservice if I don't do so. I'll start with the good: if you like history, this place has it; the rooms and decors are charming; hotel seemed to have invested on things that matter superficially - B&O speakers, pretty decors inside La Paloma, and good toiletries. Unfortunately, those are all the good things there are. Now the bad ... When you scratched the surface (which is pretty easy), you'd think that this hotel must be impoverished or something. For starters, there are two of us checked into the suite. I have very long hair so no matter how sparingly I try to use toiletries, I typically go through two tubes each time so that means what they gave us wouldn't have been enough. When I called to ask for an extra set of toiletries and politely explained my situation, they adamantly said they could not provide or accommodate because their policy was one set of toiletries and that was it. Same goes with towels - they would not replace used towels within the same day. In addition, the suite that we stayed in was cold and the hotel staff told us to use the coverlet instead because apparently the hotel was not allowed to turn on central heating unless the temperature drops below 10C! Also, don't be fooled by this free "mini bar" advertisement. There's a sign that stated very clearly that you are not allowed to take any of the drinks (all of which are non-alcoholic, save for one can of beer, actually) outside of the hotel room or else you'd be charged. Anything you've consumed you must leave the empty bottles / cans on the bar counter. In other words, they really want to make sure they can save where they can as much as possible. And now, the restaurant ... This hotel has a fine dining restaurant called La Paloma. While it's really nicely decorated, the food prices were ridiculously exorbitant (example: pan seared foie gras which was actually overcooked was priced at over MOP 300) and in some cases more than that of a local Michelin-star restaurant. However, the quality was definitely not up to par at all. The service at the restaurant was also cool at best. When I went in for dinner at 10:20pm (last order was at 10:30pm), I could overhear the chef grumbling that he had to leave by 11pm (which may explain why my pan seared foie gras was overdone). Now, just for the record, I finished my entire meal by 10:50pm so there really was no need for the rudeness. And finally, do note that most of the staffs aren't multi-lingual as they claim on the website. Most of the ones I've come across couldn't understand English, although when I switched to their native language their service didn't really improve either. I don't mind if someone doesn't understand English, but I do mind when website falsely advertised things, as this hotel had done so on more than one occasion. Overall, this was the worst hotel experience ever. I'm surprised that it even got a 5-star rating, although the fact that its ranking on TripAdvisor was near the bottom definitely showed that I was not alone in my disappointing experience at this hotel. Bottom line is, please try to invest a bit more to improve customer service and customer experience. This hotel could've really...