Conrad Algarve Review

I’d long wanted to visit the Conrad Algarve in the south of Portugal. For so long, in fact, that I can’t even remember how it got into my head in the first place! But when we finally planned a long-awaited summer trip to spend 10 days exploring Portugal, I knew the time had come.

Our stay cost $0, despite cash rates of about 800 Euro (just under $1,000) a night. For our four night stay, we used 3 Hilton Honors Free Night Reward certificates from a combination of the Hilton Honors Aspire and Hilton Honors Surpass® credit cards plus 90,000 points for the 4^th night (It now appears to be 100,000 points per night for a standard room – still a great deal in season, giving you about 1 cent per point in value for your Hilton Honors points).

We also knew we’d be able to each use our $200 bi-annual Hilton Aspire credit card resort credits at this property, so that was a nice $400 rebate that we used to treat ourselves to massages while our son enjoyed some activities at the kids club (which I’ll highlight a bit below).

The hotel is certainly posh! No question about it.

The Algarve is an expensive area that attracts what would best be described as the Hamptons crowd, but I’ll explain in a bit how surprised (disappointed) we were with the area as a whole compared to expectations.

When you arrive, you’ll no doubt notice fancy sports cars near the valet stand. Michael Jordan was apparently a guest at the Conrad just a few weeks prior. I do think that, if you are looking for luxury in this part of the Algarve (about 15 minutes from Faro), the Conrad is THE spot.

And it is a GORGEOUS hotel.

I’d let them know in advance that it was a special occasion (our 5^th wedding anniversary) and also that we were hoping for an Diamond upgrade since standard rooms are tight with a toddler and Hilton Honors has no realistic way to book suites with points (I mean, you CAN, but at more than ten times the points cost of a standard room and also you cannot use certificates – so it wasn’t a real option).

When we checked in, unfortunately there was no standard suite available (and truly, there wasn’t) but they did leave a bottle of champagne in the room and that was greatly appreciated!

But I want to also mention that this Diamond upgrade request turned into the most gauche part of the stay….

There have been many times where I’ve stayed at a hotel and, when no upgrade was available at check in, an offer is made to contact me if one opens mid-stay with the option to move. I’d generally wind up declining as moving rooms is a hassle, but it depends on the room assigned and the suite available.

I’ll also note that Hilton does not require any meaningful upgrade in its terms and conditions, so the hotel didn’t do anything wrong as it relates to the Hilton Honors program.

But what happened next blew my mind.

On the second night, we were offered an upgrade for the last two nights, but as follows:

We would like to follow up regarding your request to upgrade the room. We are pleased to inform you that a King Deluxe Suite has become available for the last two nights of your stay.

The supplement for this suite is currently €439. As a Diamond member booking directly, you’re eligible for a complimentary upgrade upon arrival, which unfortunately wasn’t possible earlier due to the lack of availability. However, we are happy to offer you a special discounted rate of €375 for this spacious suite.

Please let us know if you would like to proceed, so we can make the necessary arrangements and adjustments to your booking.

So, while they’d said it would have been complimentary when we checked in (if available), they were giving us an incredible €64 off the public rate to move halfway through the stay. I could not feel that Diamond member “thank you for your loyalty” any more than at that moment! Even my wife (who very much sits on the sidelines with regards to my fanatical loyalty program obsession) gave me a huge WTF look and asked me how in the world that was a real email. Then they called to follow up and my wife answered and said something to the effect of “Are you serious with this? It feels like a slap in the face to offer a 15% discount on what would have been complimentary for our status” and they confirmed that was indeed the offer. We declined.

The other time we felt like it was a bit of a nickel and dime hotel was at dinner the first night when we asked for water and were informed that water could not be provided unless we paid $12 for a bottle. It was the only hotel on our 16-day trip in Europe that a hotel wouldn’t provide tap water. The waiter even said the hotel waiter was filtered and safe, but they were instructed not to provide it.

And yet, there was so much about the resort that was the TOTAL OPPOSITE of these and truly generous, which actually made it all the more confusing.

• The parking, including valet was free for everyone
• The family pool had tons of free inflatables available. I’ve never seen this before and it was fantastic. It could be that it was a way to keep people with kids away from the main pool – and if so, well done! It worked!
• They did give us the bottle of champagne in the room on arrival for our anniversary.
• Though the restaurant wouldn’t provide water, there were unlimited small boxes of water available at reception all the time on request.
• The Diamond breakfast was PHENOMENAL. More on that below, but it is really above and beyond what was required of a Hilton Honors property.
• Diamonds are also offered both a complimentary welcome drink AND a complimentary bottle of local wine with a meal at their restaurant.

OK, so with all of that out of the way……

The Room

The standard king room was well appointed, although the bathroom was quite awkward in that you could only turn the light on from outside and you also could not lock the door. Let me tell you that whoever thought that non-lockable sliding doors on a bathroom door was the way to go does not have kids….

The bath and shower were both nice, the room was a comfortable size, and we had a great view of the construction of condos next door. But it was from the top floor! 😉

Honestly the view didn’t bother me since we weren’t there to be in the room, but yes, I suppose that it was hard to consider it to be a preferred room when while it was on the highest floor, it literally viewed a construction site. But I know they were quite full, so no big deal.

The Property / Pools

The property was mostly the pools (two of them), plus the spa – which had its own pool –the Kid’s Club, and the restaurant. The food at the restaurant was all good as was the service and, if not for the water thing, we probably would have dined there a second time. They did have a nice feature where someone from the Kid’s Club would have activities during the earlier hours, but we were on a late schedule and somehow wound up missing those times at both breakfast and dinner each night.

The higher pool was intended for those without kids and the lower pool was for families.

As I mentioned above, they didn’t explicitly ban families from the higher pool, but with only the lower pool having a shallow section (plus a small, very shallow mini-pool for infants/ younger toddlers) and a ton of inflatables, all of the families wound up at the lower pool, even though only the upper pool was heated. Then again, it was in the 90’s during our stay so the water was warm enough.

Kid’s Club

The Kid’s Club was very interesting in that it was only available at an additional charge. But it actually worked just fine like that! There was a morning session, a lunch session, and an afternoon session. I only recall the cost of the afternoon session as that is what our son did one of the days and it was 3.5 hours for 45 Euro, from 1 to 4:30.

The reason I didn’t mind the cost was that it meant the club had very few kids in it and they therefore had a very good staff to kid ratio which made us feel much more comfortable leaving him for a few hours, which we’d never done before.

They also had set activities planned for each day, things like making food or arts and crafts projects – in additional to general play time and even light outdoor activities like soccer.

He had a great time and the staff all seemed very friendly and on top of things, so it worked out very well. It seemed to be one of our son’s favorite kid’s clubs so far.

Breakfast

For Gold and Diamond members, everything was included – no restrictions.

There was an extensive buffet, and you could also order anything at all off the menu – even things that were on the buffet if you just wanted something freshly made. Here was the menu of what was available beyond what was on the buffet, which also featured a chef’s plate of the day which varied each day.

You could also order any coffee drink you wanted. No limits on anything and they were fantastic about allergies as well.

The food was all delicious as was the coffee and I looked forward to breakfast each day.

Spa

We both had massage treatments which were reasonable and good, but I want to mention that Diamond members do get complimentary access to the spa facilities which include a bit of a water circuit, a cold plunge, two shower “experiences,” a sauna, a steam room, and one of those things of ice pellets you can use on sore spots.

The Beach

It’s important to know that while the Conrad contracts a beach area, all beaches in Portugal are public by law. So while the Conrad provides a shuttle to their beach club, it’s actually a public beach club with absolutely no preference given to guests. They can’t even reserve beach chairs for you at the hotel. First come, first served. The surf at their beach is also on the rougher side. We took a chance and drove to a different local beach but that was quite an adventure as the beach club renting chairs at that beach was full but we had success in passing some cash to the attendant at a hotel on the beach and securing two chairs there which was just as good. That said, the beach wasn’t too special and if you are planning a trip to this area for the beaches, be aware that while these may be decent beaches, they are far from what you might expect if you’re used to, for example, Caribbean beaches.

Add to that the challenge of not even knowing if you’ll be able to get chairs when you arrive and I’d say to just stick to the pools at the resort.

The Local Area

There’s a small complex across from the resort with a few restaurants and shops which is an obvious choice if looking to go off property. For one meal we went to an incredibly local place where the was one man taking orders from one written board and also doing all the cooking. Interesting stuff. We had one meal at the Italian restaurant across the street which was pretty good. Our last meal was at a place called KoKo which was on a golf course and was pretty much overpriced mediocre food with super uninterested waitstaff and lots of kids just running all over the place so I’d avoid that one.

Faro was about a 30-minute ride away of you want to see an actual town in the Algarve without going too far.

The Staff

Everyone was super nice, full stop. Once we got the concierge helping us, we had everything sorted and he gave great advice and followed up by WhatsApp as promised.

A weak link was that although they have this one wonderful concierge, the front desk agents apparently are all told to be concierges as well.

So, on our first morning, we made the mistake of asking a front desk agent for the concierge. She said she was *also* a concierge and we began asking about the beaches and tours and restuarants, etc. Everything wound up being “let me ask my colleagues and get back to you.” She didn’t actually seem familiar with the area, a conclusion we reached after an hour with our kid going absolutely nuts from how long it was taking.

The icing on the cake was that we asked her to try and reserve us beach chairs and make lunch reservations at a beach club (not the Conrad’s) for the next morning and while she probably did make many calls that went unanswered, she didn’t let us know she was unsuccessful until 1:45pm the next day. Mind you we were asking about…. The next day!

By the time we got her email we’d already made our own way to whatever beach we found and had already had lunch. Did she think we were just waiting all day to see if she could come through? That was a bit ridiculous. It was *after* that when we found the real concierge.

Long story short – only trained concierges that REALLY know the intricacies of an area should be acting as concierges. It’s far worse to give bad advice or flat out not know how things work and have a guest lose time or lose out on activities because you didn’t know. She should have told us when the concierge would be in and we’d have saved an hour of our time and gotten things right from the start. 

Overall

I think you can tell it was a bit of a mixed bag. An overall beautiful property with nice staff and quite a bit of generous treatment for Hilton elites (while at the same time, you know, not always). Solid pools and it does a great job making families with children feel very welcome while at the same time taking nothing away from the upscale feel for those without children.

If you are using Hilton points or Free Night Rewards, the hotel is certainly a solid choice. Now you know some pros and cons and can decide for yourself if it’s for you.

If you’ve been, or are thinking of going, let me know in the comments!

Thoughts?

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