Four Points by Sheraton Sesimbra — Hotel in Sesimbra

This is probably the worse Marriott hotel I've stayed at and almost ruined our holidays. Fully booked and you're placed in a room that smells to sewage and bleach. At least the room size was fantastic. I couldn't believe this and had to search in these reviews to find a few other commenters that validated this situation. If you find yourself reading this, a couple of tips to remove the smell.

Either a) open the windows and eventually the smell will go away, or b) just don't turn the air conditioner on, because that's the place from where the smell comes from.

About the air conditioning, in our room we had three air entries. Big room, two bedrooms, that was nice. But only one of the air entrances would actually cool the room. On the other two, who knows where the air was pointing to. Now imagine, that on the middle of a heat wave (39C, 102F)...

The pool. More like a pond, honestly. It's good for cooling your body but at the end of the day the color of the water is visibly altered due to all the suncream and the reduced surface.

The buffet is actually not bad I must say. Now, be ready to the drama of 45 minutes wait if you go at 10AM because the buffet space is ridiculously small for the amount of people this hotel is hosting. They would need at least twice the space and still there would be people waiting. The outcome is that the personnel are helpless, running everywhere, disorganized and unhappy. I second the comments about people working there not smiling much and I can see why.

The hotel location. Far from the town, far from the beach and far from the restaurants. But, worth mentioning that they have a free car that will pick you up. We didn't use it as we had a car but It will be need it.

And finally, the picture. Imagine that you get to your room in a four stars hotel waiting for a romantic stay and your main room views look like the picture. That was what we found when arriving and it turned out to be a sneak peek at what we were going to find. The picture was taken when we left. Maybe after seeing this they will decide to...

Beautiful location, nice views. Sesimbra is a wonderful town with a nice beach, great restaurants and lots of activities. Especially loved the dolphin tour. The hotel has a shuttle with a couple stops in town, but it's also not that bad of a walk. I would walk on my own but take the shuttle when we had our kids.

The room was spacious but had no amenities. Not even a coffee maker (as indicated on the website). Instead there was instant coffee and a minibar fridge. It would have been much nicer if there were even some basic amenities in the room like a coffee maker and a fridge we could use for food and milk for the kids. The towels were musty when we arrived. The ones they were replenished with were fresh.

The hotel staff seemed confused at times. We had asked a few times to have some hangers in our room, but never received them so just didn't hang clothes. They claimed the kids club opened later than the time on the sign. Even at the later time you had to get the restaurant staff to open the hotel. They must be really poorly managed when guests have to get involved with hotel operations.

The food was all over the place. Some was good, others terrible. One evening we waited over an hour for the most well done piece of beef I have seen. It may have had something to do with changing from summer to off season and not enough staff during the shoulder season (another sign of poor management) but there's no excuse for such an overcooked steak. Ate it anyway since if we waited another hour for another one the restaurant would've been closed. They did give us a drink for the wait so that was nice. The staff were all very nice, friendly and helpful.

The pool was frigid, but we were there a few days before it was closing. It's otherwise a nice pool area with a spot...

Stylish brand new hotel - but with the worst service we had in our trip around Portugal. Here is the example. At breakfast the waitress saw me struggling with the orange juice machine (the oranges got stuck and no juice was coming out). Instead of helping, she pointed out that I had 2 disposable cups, one inside another, and told me rudely and sarcastically “Do you really need 2 cups?”. When I was starring at her in disbelief and processing in my mind that perhaps it was somehow lost in translation communication, she told me: “Because of such people like you we ran out of cup”! I could have explained that the cups were stuck together and I couldn’t separate them, could have actually point out that because there were no clean glasses I had to use these disposable ones, or whatever. I didn’t want to discuss. But the waitress didn’t stop there. She continued: “I was going to help you (pointing at the broken orange machine), but now no”. And she walked away. I stayed in hundreds of hotels on all continents and never - from Dubai 5+stars to Vietnam minus 5 stars I encounted such rudeness from a waiting staff. Never! What it matters that on arrival we were greeted by the Manager himself cause of our hotel status, that the rooms are nice and comfy — if your day can be destroyed by one of the staff member talking down to you.

Totally disappointed and obviously I would never return to this Sheraton again. Especially when one pays €300 per night it’s not the treatment you expect.

PS the restaurant has other issues. We had burgers and salad for lunch, and although the burgers were quite decent, the Caesar salad was below average with mayo instead of dressing and not fresh prawns. Not recommended...