Hotel São Jorge Garden — Hotel in Velas

I stayed 3 nights in this hotel as part of a group. The location on the coast, opposite Pico, is good, the (unheated) pool set in gardens looks nice. The rooms are small but adequate. It seems that the hotel is divided into two parts: those that have views over the pool, with coffee/tea facilities and those which don't (have views of the back of the restaurant and a bit of garden with some building works on the wall)! You can tell I was in the latter!||This hotel prides itself on its breakfasts, with lots of home-baked goods (cakes, pies, pastries, biscuits). Unfortunately that is not much good if you can't eat gluten. It does not offer dinner in the evening. Since our group trip involved full board, we were sent to a pretty basic cafe up the road with formica tables and a very limited menu (vegetable soup, then grilled tuna or meat, then desert - which included tinned fruit salad one night). We had the same offer for 3 nights! The fish/meat was cooked freshly and well, at least! ||One big downside was that I slept with my window open rather than using aircon and got many mosquito bites - the only place this happened in the Azores. Maybe to do with the garden. ||Two things really annoyed me/us. On the last morning we were leaving early, as was another larger party. Our guide negotiated at length to get us a partial breakfast (excluding cooked items) before we left. We were told this would be in reception. Again, since I can't eat baked goods there was further negotiation to get me an apple and an orange set aside, as a special favour. When we arrived at 6.30 that morning, there had been dry sliced bread, sliced cheese and ham and coffee. I say 'there had been' because the previous group had eaten most of it (see picture). There was about 1 cm of milk left a jug to go with the remains of the coffee for our group of 9 and, of course, no fruit for me. That was very poor given that both the ferry and the flight out of Sao Jorge leave early so guests must regularly need to leave before breakfast opens at 7.30 am.||The final insult was that I went to take my extra supplies of cheese/ham (because I couldn't eat much of their food) out of the room fridge when I left, only to find that it was warm. The fridge had been unplugged and the plug tucked behind the bin. This is a hotel with notices, if you know what I mean. There was a notice on the fridge whose English section said ' This refrigerator is for your use and is empty. If you wish to fill with any of these items, please contact directly the reception or ask for the room-service.' 'These items', was not explained/specified. So why unplug it if it is for my use? My...

We stayed here on SATA's expense after our fourth fight in three days was cancelled due to bad weather in Terceira.

The hotel features spacious, clean rooms that all face the sea; very private and secure balconies so the door can be left open at night to hear the surf lulling you to sleep; helpful and friendly staff who go the extra step to assist.

This was a Sunday night, thus many restaurants in town were closed, but our hotel reception guy called around and found that the Café Flor de Jardim was open - and that also happens to be one of the choices where we could use SATA's dinner vouchers. The food there was superb (see my separate review), and the staff was extremely helpful, friendly, and not at all put off by our dismal command of their language.

Breakfast was excellent, with a wide variety of freshly prepared foods, including the traditional, like eggs, bacon, and sausage; fresh fruit, yogurt, bread, cheeses, and deli meat; pastries, juices, and a wide assortment of nuts, raisins and other toppings for fruit and yogurt; espresso and an assortment of tea varieties.

The room was very quiet, totally in contrast to our previous two nights in the Hotel Soares Neto (see my post on that lodging). Previous reviews mentioned loud AC units - that may be true, but this is late November and it was about 63F overnight so we didn't need the AC or heat. We just left the balcony door wide open and slept like the rocks on the shoreline 😎

Hotel São Jorge is one of SATA's contracted partners in Velas, so if your flight is cancelled and they give you a voucher, be sure to specifically request this hotel.

I'm giving it five stars; Google tags it as a 3-star hotel but I think that's under-rating it. Maybe it's not the Ritz Carlton, but compared to its competitors in Velas, it's definitely an...

I spent two nights at this hotel. My first night at this hotel was utterly miserable and I got zero sleep. My room was like a Euro dance club with pounding base dance music, as though I was trying to sleep in the middle of a club. I started calling hotel reception at 12 and called continuously till after 3am. The hotel did not consider this its problem since off property and made zero effort to try to account for my inconvenience. The, “not our problem you paid for a room and got no sleep” attitude of the hotel is the basis for this rating. There was zero sense of apology, let’s give a small discount, or a free room service, nothing. The fact that I paid for a room that was extremely loud and could not sleep, this hotel made blatantly clear that I just had to suck it up and accept it. So, buyer beware. I have stayed at hotels where things go perfectly and hotels where on occasion something goes wrong, eg, hvac not working or loud wedding event disturbed guests. The reputable hotels are the ones where when sometimes goes wrong they try to make it up to the guests. The Hotel Sao Jorge Garden is not that type of hotel. Also, because I did not get any sleep, I was not able to do what I planned to do that day in Sao Jorge. So be careful where you stay. I thought staying at the larger hotel in Sao Jorge would be the best choice, however, it was not. This is the worse experience I have ever had in all my years of travel. Every other hotel I have stayed at understood that one of their core duties is to provide an environment where their guest could have a peaceful rest at night. Someone needs to educate the Hotel Sao Jorge Garden on this basic hospitality...