Jardins d'Ajuda Hotel

2 readers found this review helpful

Hotel facilities are excellent with indoor (heated) and outdoor pools and a fully equipped health spa. The staff are very attentive and friendly and the free bus service to Funchal was excellent.
Problem was that the management attituce resembled Fawlty Towers, particularly where the restaurant was concerned. The situation was sometimes chaotic with a sort of 'free for all' at the buffet with food not being topped up on a regular basis and no one to supervise this. The choice of cooked evening meals was limited for a four star hotel and strange things kept turning up on the cold buffet. Cold sprouts anyone?
The management was also inflexible. Giving up on the evening meals we tried to change to lunches instead and were told that they only did this on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays! They finally relented after we pointed out none of their communications to customers actually said this and there were other people in the restaurant when we were there so why the fuss? But woe betide you if you asked for a simple scoop of vanilla ice cream for your dessert at lunch! The answer is 'No'.
We had a lovely room overlooking the garden and I strongly recommend this, otherwise the outward facing rooms overlook busy roads. The room had what you'd expect of a four star hotel for example hair dryer, bidet etc. The problem with ours was that the air conditioning only circulated the air and didn't cool it despite having the patio doors closed. We reported this but it never seemed to get any better so we had to have the patio doors open at night with visits from the friendly and hungry local mosquitos. Still we decided that this was worth putting up with for the sake of the excellent room we had.
So overall we would recommend this hotel on a 'bed and breakfast' basis but not 'half board'.