Pine Cliffs Residence, a Luxury Collection Resort, Algarve

This review is based on my stay from June 2025 in a 3-bedroom residence as a family that included 3 couples. The Good - Beautiful setting - Ground meticulously maintained - Dramatic beach area Needs Significant Improvement - Maintenance - Housekeeping - Customer service & follow-up We arrived after a long trip from the US and a long drive from Lisbon to check into our villa only to realize that the villa that I booked almost a year in advance using almost 500,000 Bonvoy points also included a €1000 “upgrade fee” when I inquired about what the upgrade was nobody at the front desk could tell me because I already reserved the largest most expensive villa, but they assured me that they would check on it. Upon entering my villa, I noticed that there was a terrible smell in it, the air conditioning wasn’t cooling (which was probably causing the musty damp smell), and the Wi-Fi would not upgrade to the premium high-speed Wi-Fi that my Bonvoy gold standing provided. I immediately notified the front desk about these issues and was assured that they would be addressed. I continued to notify the front desk of these issues twice daily during my stay and they were never corrected, the temperature of my villa never went below 26 C (79 F) The multiple people that were sent to fix the air conditioning told me that it should cool down to 20 C (68 F), but they did not have the expertise to fix it and HVAC experts need to be called – that never happened. Because the air conditioning never worked, the smell never went away, even though they sent someone from housekeeping to mop the floor (not sure what that was supposed to accomplish). Additionally (except for the first night) nightly turndown service of the villa was never performed, despite me bringing the issue to their attention. All in all, this experience is not commensurate with a Bonvoy Luxury Collection Property and when I brought that to the management’s attention they agreed but did nothing to improve my experience. In summary, I communicated the above issues daily to the property, I wrote Bonvoy a letter expressing my dissatisfaction (during my stay) then followed up with the property’s contact point provided by Bonvoy, 3 times (during my stay, 1 week after check out & 2 weeks after checkout) and the responses I received were essentially: - Sorry you had these problems - Thank you for bringing it to our attention so that we can use it as a training opportunity for our staff - We agree that this level of service is not consistent with Bonvoy’s Luxury Collection properties (their highest level) - Be assured that they are looking into why I was charged an additional €1000 for an upgrade that doesn’t exist – note it is now more than a month after checkout and I’ve never gotten an answer to this - I was offered a “special confidential rate” (never quantified) to return to the property for them to provide me the experience I should’ve gotten the first time I understand that issues happen all the tim

Great location. Great facilities but totally ruined by wedding parties and events. Sat 5th July impossible to escape the wedding speeches - incredibly loud and overwhelming. The wedding party took over main facilities and created huge noise and commotion almost impossible to avoid. . Very disappointing since this is an expensive resort.