Hotel One Shot Aliados Goldsmith 12 — Hotel in Porto

Disappointed with the lack of consideration by the hotel staff given my inability to check in.

I was unable to check in to the hotel because of Queen Elizabeth’s untimely death, my flight was cancelled and I had to stay in London overnight. Trip was planned well in advance and obviously did not expect such an event.

I informed Expedia who then reached out to the property to explain my situation, cancel the reservation and solicit a refund. With the reservation cancelled the property was free to rebook someone and avoid a loss, this I thought would be reason to receive a refund, but property staff thought otherwise. I walked in days later when I was able to fly to Porto to have a face to face discussion and explained why I was unable to check in and sadly all I received was a spiel regarding policy and how exceptions could not be made to refund my purchase since I booked over 30 days in advance.

Businesses, regardless of industry, are very much able to make exceptions to their policies, specially in the travel industry, and specially due to extenuating circumstances. I asked the front desk person if the hotel had made exceptions before and he advised they had done so due to a customers family member’s death.

In summary, I am disappointed with the hotel for their lack of care to my case given a situation I was in no control of, knowing that no policy is written in stone, and that my attempt to have a conversation was met with resistance to even talk to a supervisor.

My advice is that in the future have consideration for your customers specially if they’re in a situation that they have...

Lovely hotel in the heart of Porto. Great location close to all amenities. The service from the staff was great and the facilities, rooms, services, etc. were also wonderful.

I am giving it a 4 star because we paid to upgrade our room to have a corner balcony, but I was not made aware at the time of booking that both roads surrounding the hotel were under construction. That beautiful view from the photos I paid for was met with closed roads, dirt and construction equipment instead. I was also woken up by the construction at 7:45am. I only found out about the construction a week before arrival.

City construction is not the hotel’s fault, but I wish as a guest I would have been compensated somehow for the disturbance. A letter from the manager apologizing for the disturbance, complimentary breakfast, a credit for a future stay, or a discount on the room price since I paid for a view and balcony that I couldn’t use. Any one of those actions would have made our stay better.

Had I known the construction was in place at the time of booking I would have not paid to upgrade for a balcony view (let alone two balconies), or I might have chosen another hotel.

Construction is set to be in place for the next few months so anyone looking to book just be aware and don’t bother upgrading to a balcony.

This aside, the hotel was lovely, the staff were great and the facilities...

I was so excited about this hotel and was left so underwhelmed and pissed off. We were here for a few short nights and the noise from the street was almost unbearable. It surely nestled in the center of the city but the windows are thin and loud and so many drunks are a few streets away. They would go into our room and take out room card which would leave our room ridiculously hot. What takes the cherry though is the staff's lack of awareness -- it took over 10 minutes to get customers checked in and the staff did not know how to effectively prioritize. They would literally stop mid-sentence to help a customer behind the one they are currently helping and would not stop talking to customers and gave unsolicited advice/recommendations. The customer in front of us was from New Zealand - just landed and clearly exhausted and the front desk person would no stop talking to them about how she was going on vacation and she was excited and giving them recommendations when they specifically said they didnt want it. Then when it came for my turn, I got a ridiculous amount of unsolicited advice on how I should check out of a hotel not once but 5x times on repeat. The staff needs to learn prioritization, efficiency, social cues, and how to talk to customers and not to sound rude but speak...