Hotel Occidental Faro — Hotel in Faro

We would not recommend that anyone book a room at Hotel Faro & Beach Club, located in Portugal. WE HIGHLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU READ OUR REVIEW BEFORE EVEN THINKING OF BOOKING A ROOM AT HOTEL FARO! Do so at your own risk!

When we arrived, our suspicions were immediately alerted when we were told that full payment was required up front for both nights. Of all the hotels we had booked during our trip to Portugal, this was the ONLY hotel that required payment in full upon arrival. We wondered why and if there was a reason for this policy, but complied (what choice did we have given we had already arrived and had no other available choices). Well, it wouldn’t be long before we found out the answer to that question…keep reading and bear in mind that this hotel puts itself out there as a luxury destination and that the price for our room was just under $500 for two nights!

On the morning after our second night, we awoke with ants all over us in our bed, in our luggage, and all over the walls and furniture. It was disgusting, to say the least! Our first reaction after jumping out of bed was to immediately call the front desk for assistance. The person at the front desk advised that “housekeeping” would be sent (to apparently clean the ants??)! Apparently, this hotel believes that cleaning an infestation is the best way to handle these situations versus actually hiring and paying for an exterminator to address the problem! Meanwhile, nothing was done to assist us, we were left in the room with the ants!

We did some checking around the room to understand where the ants had come from and discovered a moldy looking hole just beneath the window in our room, beneath the window curtain. Ants were streaming in and it was clear, given the moldy hole, that the hotel had known, or should have known, about this situation! Gee, wonder why they insisted on full payment in advance!

On the morning that we should have been enjoying our final hours in Faro, we instead had to unpack all our luggage to remove all the ants and so that we could leave the hotel ant free. It was truly a nightmare for us.

To make matters worse, housekeeping never even came by, and so I was forced to call the front desk again to complain! I was promptly given the excuse that the “ant problem” was not a hotel concern, but rather a problem that the City of Faro had whenever it rained. We could not believe it that the hotel was actually blaming its own city for its ant problem….given the moldy hole in the wall next to the window, how is it that the city was to blame? Also, given the response to send housekeeping to apparently “clean” the ants instead of an exterminator, it’s no wonder to us that the problem persists in this hotel.

Bottom line is that this hotel is not worth booking, certainly not worth the high rate it charges. To make matters worse, requiring payment upfront upon checkin is a deceptive practice so that they can keep all of your money, and maintain the upper hand in a complaint situation should the “City’s” ant problem occur during your stay!

While we really enjoyed our stay in all other parts of Portugal, which included Lisbon, Sintra, Porto, Guarda, Chavez, Evora, and Setabul, we highly recommend booking a different hotel if your visit includes the City of Faro, or better yet, perhaps just not visit Faro at all since apparently Hotel Faro claims that it’s city has infestation...

The Hotel is situated adjacent to the marina, it’s a plain modern building, with a clean bright clinical foyer. Check in is after 2pm and Reception enforced this when we arrived around noon. Case storage is available but not offered by default, you have to ask. You can't access the rooftop area for a snack or a drink as the room card is required to operate the lifts. At check in you will need to temporarily show your passport, normal procedure. You will then be asked to pay the visitor/tourist tax, no receipt is offered. Access to the room is via a lift which requires the use of the room access card. The lifts often have a mind of their own. Our room (on floor 2) is of a good size. A second chair would be a nice addition. A print/similar on one of the plain walls would be a nice touch. There's a distinct lack of drawer space and a few more clothes hangers would be useful. You need to insert the room card, or any card of the same dimensions, into a slot near the door to activate the AC, TV, lights; this is not mentioned at check in, a few folks we met in the corridors were not aware of the practice. There is no kettle in the room despite photographs and mentions on various sites, Reception/Housekeeping can oblige. The bathroom is fine, a grab bar adjacent to the bath would be a good addition to enable easy use of the bath/shower especially for Seniors. I asked for an in bath mat which was then provided. The shower head/handset is a bit high for anyone shorter than 5' 2" to reach. The shower head is not on a vertical bar but attached to a fixed bracket. The toiletries are good. The beds are a good sized single, comfortable and with a duvet. Standard EU sockets in the room, however the shaver socket in the hairdryer unit in the bathroom is an EU socket not the narrower pin separation often found for electric shavers. The bedside USB sockets are handy. The ladies who service the bedroom are very thorough and their attention to detail is noted. WiFi is good throughout the Hotel. The breakfast is very good indeed, but no sweet buttery brioches on offer. The lads and lasses who clear away the tables are good. The 'music' can be both loud and annoying. The roof terrace is good, with great views over the marina and the nearby stork nests. The soft easy seats on the terrace are distinctly for the younger guests as your backside will be very low down, similar to the seats in the Reception area. A word of warning, if you make a hot drink in the paper, compostable cups, you run the risk of the cup coming apart at the seams with the resultant mess... I speak from experience, one ruined Marco Polo guidebook! During our stay, the country marked Carnation Day, commemorating events on 25th April 1974. There wasn't a single carnation flower evident in the Hotel and I didn't notice any member of staff wearing a carnation. I asked for a meeting with Management to discuss various matters, as yet no response to either my webform request or the email direct to Reception. Whilst the Hotel has one of the prime sites and views to match, we will NOT return to the Hotel Faro, there are other Hotels with equal or better star rating and possibly better attitudes, etc. The dismissive and/or obstructive and/or disinterested nature of the male front of house staff's attitudes are...

When we booked our stay here it was called "Faro Hotel & Beach Club". We should have done our research better, but it is a little misleading calling it "beach club" when there are no beaches in sight. We saw that the hotel offered a shuttle bus to and from the beach, but it didn't say that the ride was 30 minutes. Additionally, during our stay, the bus driver apparently had injured his foot, so the bus wasn't even available. Regardless, you are better off taking the shuttle boat which is a ten-minute walk from the hotel and also takes about 30 minutes, but that of course isn't included, so you need to pay for that yourself. The beach is fabulous once you get there though!||Also the "pool" on roof is almost a joke, being about three by four meters wide.|| Arriving at the hotel, the larger portion of the front is plastered with commercials for some real estate agency, almost making you wonder if you're at the right place. The ground floor where the reception is located is a bit eerie with large empty, dusty, un-used conference-like rooms. Apart from the entrance to the real estate agency of course. Made us wonder if the building was originally designed for something completely different than a hotel, like a conference center?||We were a party of six and had booked three rooms, months in advance. When checking in, they didn't manage to give us rooms located together, but one room was separated on a different floor. Even the two rooms on the same floor weren't next to each other, even though I know the room in between checked in at the same time as us.||The rooms didn't really impress either, but the worst part was the air-conditioning. To begin with the noise from it was very high, but it also turned itself off completely when the desired temperature was reached, causing it to go on-and-off every 30 minutes the entire nights! Made it very hard to sleep, the first night I woke just about every time it turned on or off. Also the corridors on our floor were pretty big and all marble, and with the badly isolated doors the noise from outside was pretty big.||The one thing the hotel has going for it is the roof-top bar, with an astonishing view of the port of Faro.||Our experience at this hotel was not very good, and definitely not worth the price. If you want a more luxury feeling (probably a little more expensive though) I would suggest to try the 3HB hotel a couple of blocks away, we went there for drinks one night and it breathed quality in a totally different way. |I guess the experience at the Occidental may change with the new owners, but I would say they have their work cut out for them to try and turn...