Crowne Plaza Vilamoura Algarve

"Beware of this hotel posing as a 5 star hotel. As a Diamond Elite member I stay in hundreds of hotels and I’ve never seen such an awfully run establishment. Upon check-in I was greeted by Claudia who was very friendly, explained that my room as a Diamond Elite was upgraded to a higher floor. I asked about a higher category and to be fair she offered me the chance to see a different duplex view saying that they had no sea view. I declined and took the junior suite with the sea view. To be fair it is a very well apportioned room (with a lovely view), albeit the aircon didn’t work to cool the room and even after having called the engineer the room still would not cool properly. It’s a good job it’s February. Imagine how awful it would be if you booked here in summer or when it gets any warmer… I was offered a welcome amenity of 1 drink or 600 points. I said that every IHG I’ve ever checked into gives 2 drinks when there are two people and enquired whether I’m to sit alone when having my one drink. The humour was lost on Claudia and it was clear the stingy hotel posing as 5 star would not offer this. The first time ever in all of my stays with IHG! Another first was that I asked for a late check out, it is a benefit of being Diamond Elite after all but I was told that I should call back the next day as they will only decide on the day of check out. So you have to arrange your plans around the Crowne Plaza. They excel at putting themselves first and their guests last. The last delight was two very loudspeaker announcements in Portuguese at 23:08 and 23:24 waking me from my sleep. I called and spoke to Gon Salvo who was pleasant and explained that it was a system malfunction. A request to speak to a manager resulted in being transferred to Joao who was the Front Office Supervisor and he is definitely the rudest man in hospitality at the moment. If there was an award to win, he would win it. A loud speaker announcement in the middle of the night! I thought I was at a Butlins holiday camp rather than a 5 star hotel in Vilamoura. The bottom line was that he’s fixing the issue, that I should be grateful for but he intends to do nothing all for the inconvenience. So if you come here, expect a disturbed nights sleep that you’ll just have to put up with. Do yourself a favour and stay next door at the Hyatt Regency. I have no status in Hyatt but I imagine you’d get better treatment than a Diamond Elite would here!"

"NEVER STAY AT THIS HOTEL OR AN IHG property. IHG, THE OWNER. MANAGERS AND FRONT DESK AT THIS HOTEL ARE INCOMPETENT AND UNPROFESSIONAL. Back in June of 2025 we made a reservation by phone. Later while checking the IHG app we made a second reservation on the IHG app getting a Corp rate. We were planning on getting two rooms so we figured we'd keep them both at this time. A few weeks later (and weeks before the cancel-by date) we emailed the hotel and asked them to cancel our reservations. We received an email response from the hotel that the reservations was cancelled believing all reservations were now cancelled at this time weeks later (and still 24 hours before the Cancel-BY date) the Crowne hotel front desk clerk contacted us directly with a "pre-check-in" email. We immediately emailed him back and told him that we had cancelled our reservations. The clerk then informed us that we had only cancelled one reservation and that there was a second reservation in the system that was still live. Again we immediately responded telling him that we believed all reservations were cancelled and to immediately cancel the second Corp rate one. INSTEAD THE CLERK (AND MOST LIKELY AT THE DIRECTION OF MANAGEMENT AND OR OWNER) THEN PURPOSEFULLY DID NOT RESPOND BACK TO OUR SECOND EMAIL UNTIL THE CANCEL-BY DATE HAD PASSED IN ORDER TO PROCURE A LATE FEE OF A ONE NIGHT STAY ($700). The clerk and Manager then continued to play email-tag with us sending back senseless and cryptic emails but still never cancelling the reservation to ensure we would miss the cutoff date. WE ESCALATED THIS TO IHG CORP SEVERAL TIMES BY PHONE AND IN WRITING. But IHG continued to respond back by saying not to worry, that they would reach out to the hotel and cancel the charge. But after several calls and emails with IHG (and the hotel) IHG claimed the Hotel would not budge and the matter was out of their control. In my view this constitutes fraud and deceptive practices by this hotel. IHG is also guilty of being complacent in the matter by letting this hotel perpetrate this fraud. I also asked AMEX to cancel the charge, but the AMEX representative told me that "the hotel is their client" not me and refused to cancel the charge after a lack luster job of investigating. What's worse is the second reservation on the app doesn't even have the correct spelling of my name so in my view this reservation could've been made by someone else without my knowledge and should be cancelled. IHG, the Hotel owner and Manager and AMEX are not concerned. TO DATE THE HOTEL CONTINUES TO DENY THAT WE INFORMED THEM BEFORE THE CANCEL- BY DATE… UTTERLY IRRESPONSIBLE AND INCOMPETENT"

"The hotel is lovely, some areas are a little tired, bedroom floor’s for example €10 for a vodka without a mixer is very excessive and the prices at the bar apart from spirits are ok.€7 for a beer, €5 for a glass of wine. We decided on the Monday 3rd of November of our stay to have a lazy afternoon, however the extremely rude head of housekeeping marched into our room and inspected the room and balcony as if we were hiding something. That was a special birthday present for my wife. We also had extremely dirty water in our room on the Wednesday morning, 5 phone calls, 3 visits from maintenance and 2.5 hours later they decided to move to another room. The breakfast is still the best I’ve had."