"Had never visited Madeira before, stayed on B&B for 9 nights in mid March with my husband, booked with Jet2. We mainly chose this hotel due to it's location, we wanted to be able to easily walk into the historic centre of Funchal in about 25 minutes, we didn't want to stay in the Lido hotels area which is a bus ride from Funchal. The Next Hotel was very convenient for walking in, a short downhill section to the seafront which is very scenic, walking past the cruise port, Ronaldo hotel & the Santa Caterina gardens above etc, a flat & attractive stroll into town. When you come home obviously there's a 150m slope uphill to the hotel which was fine for us but might be hard for people with limited mobility. If you carry on up this hill another approx 200m you reach an area with several restaurants & bars useful for evening meals, though we personally found some of them quite overpriced.
We found the Next Hotel to be very clean, the room was thoroughly cleaned every day. Our room, on the 5th floor had a lovely sea view & we could see the Porto Santo ferry & sometimes part of a cruiseship. There's a road between the hotel and the sea. The 11th floor Cloud bar & rooftop pool had the best view of all, very panoramic. Our room was very spacious with a massive bed, a little firm but comfortable, there was plenty of hanging space but only 1 drawer so we had to keep some items in our cases. The bathroom had a strange layout, the toilet, bidet & 1 sink were separate from the shower & the other sink which was near 1 side of the bed. Overall the room was very modern & spacious, it had everything you needed. It was very quiet at night too.
Breakfast at the hotel had a good selection of foods, plenty of fruit,yoghurt,cereals, salad, hot cooked items, pastries, cake, even sparkling wine to make Bucks Fizz & Portuguese custard tarts every day etc ! We noticed another guest had fried eggs on their plate 1 day so we asked a waiter for some, you can have them made but noone tells you this. There was only 1 4 slice toaster instead of a toast machine which caused queues sometimes. If you went for breakfast later, say after 9am, you often had to queue for a table to be cleared. The staff both at reception & in the breakfast room were rather impersonal I feel, they were polite & efficient but you didn't get to know any of them or have a laugh with them.
We knew before we arrived that the Next Hotel is trying to target young, trendy people by the "wacky "decor in reception, the lifts, & especially the 1st floor corridor that leads to the bridge over the road to the main pool area by the sea, events at the rooftop bar & Recharge restaurant. This is definitely not working !!!! As the majority of guests, including ourselves are over 60 ! The music in the corridors, lifts etc didn't put us off, the hotel was a good base for exploring Funchal & Madeira in an excellent area.
We only used the pool area 1 day due to the weather unfortunately, as I say you go in the lift to the 1st floor, walk over a bridge over the road & down in another lift to the main pool overlooking the concrete swimming platform on the sea. The pool was too cold to use in March & is salt water. We ate at the Recharge restaurant here on our 1st night, after a delayed flight as we didn't want to roam round looking for somewhere to eat, it was a classy environment & we enjoyed or meal though a lot of the menu was very unusual so we didn't go again. We would definitely have eaten here again if there was a greater choice of menu.
Overall we enjoyed our holiday to Madeira & made the most of it despite the weather having very heavy showers at times due to Storm Theresa. The hotel made a clean, comfortable & convenient base for exploring Funchal."
