Belmond Reid's Palace

At over €700 per night for bed and breakfast, we had high expectations. Good location, lovely gardens and excellent breakfast. Our “deluxe” bedroom was quite small, like a standard city hotel room, with a small bathroom and old fashioned furnishings, uncomfortable bed and foam pillows. Just one comfortable chair. Nice balcony with excellent view and two chairs. However a near neighbour smoked on their balcony and the prevailing winds blew the smoke onto our balcony and into the bedroom. We then discovered that the aircon unit was so noisy that we couldn’t sleep with it on. But nor could we have the balcony door open with smoke drifting in. More surprising was our experience with the guest experiences team. At this price point, I thought they’d be helpful. Website says that trips need to be booked at least two days in advance, and we wanted a trip for our first day. I emailed asking for advice. No answer. Two days later I called and eventually got put through to a helpful lady who explained they are too busy to reply to emails. Trouble is she then followed up with an email which required a reply from me, and to which I didn’t get a reply until again I called. This continued over several days until eventually I gave up and agreed to a suggested hike which turned out to be shorter than I’d asked for and very uninteresting. Part of the problem is that Madeira has recently introduced charges to go on a hike, and numbered their various hikes accordingly. The hotel has its list of recommended hikes but they don’t easily match to the official numbered list. For a start they don’t have numbers. You have to book your specific walk with its number and time-slot before the hotel will organise a taxi to take you there.

The location and pool were pleasant, but everything else was bizarrely second rate, and a 5 star hotel that cannot even feed its guests is peculiar. .

I loved my stay at Reids Palace. Service was friendly and accomodating. Extensive facilities and eating options. I especially liked the gardens and pools. The staff went out of their way to accomodate late check-out. Our room was only a bit above average but we had use of a lovely upgraded room after our original check-out time--above and beyond! I only wish the pools were open later and perhaps had a hot tub option for off season/evenings and that the hotel was not quite as pricey!

Booked evening meal at Williams Classic colonial hotel and cocktail lounge was great but the view that was impressive in 1870 is now blocked by the savoy hotel and the cruise terminal 🤨 Williams restaurant reminded me of a 1970 office conversion with little architectural merit The food, wine and service was excellent but hugely overpriced for what it is. £500 for a less than average experience Better places to eat and better views

I've stayed in 12 Belmonds. This was my least favourite. The decor is mostly what you'd find in your grandma's house. Some of it is nice but it's a bit too old fashioned for my liking. I booked a room with striped wallpaper and apparently there's only 1 of those in the hotel so I didn't get it. They were going to give me a room with flowery wallpaper but (when I said it's so busy it's giving me a headache) they changed us to a room with simple white walls. Unfortunately we found an old sandwich that smelled badly in the mini bar. Not great! The intern at check-in was lovely and helpful. But the breakfast staff were quite slow. Good tennis court. Live entertainment at the bar was excellent. The singer had an amazing voice. Comfortable beds. Overall, unfortunately it wasn't worth the £800/ night we paid for.