Funchal Apartments - City View

The location is the best thing here, and the double room was extremely cheap. We only booked it because a flight change meant we needed a night away from our originally planned accommodation. The place felt badly maintained: hardly any toilet paper, the clean sheets were the worst quality, and the room was basically a cell, hot as a boiler room and without a DJ set. We left the window open, but a mosquito bit us all night. To enter, you walk through a souvenir shop. The guy working there took quite a while to come when we arrived. He barely said hi to me and seemed to prefer speaking only with my partner.

We had a very late keyless check-in at Apartementos Funchal by Petit Hotels, Apartment 001 - ground floor studio. Outside, the Funchal night was lovely, probably 17C. Inside, it was hot and stuffy, even with the terrace window left wide open. There’s no air movement at all. We had a rough night with a little oscillating fan just shifting the stale air around. The window and patio door open onto an enclosed terrace, walled in with a plexi-glass ceiling. There’s a narrow strip with slats at one end, presumably meant as ventilation, but we couldn’t feel any air coming through. It opens toward an alleyway by the garbage room and a neighboring restaurant, so smells come in. The apartment smelled of sewage, which isn’t uncommon in old cities, and cooking from the building. In the morning Veronica acted as if this was normal for a ground floor studio. We’ve stayed in ground floor rooms before, with working windows or terraces that weren’t enclosed by plexiglass. We said we wouldn’t sign the contract without a move or some solution. There was no other apartment, but she brought a portable air conditioner. At first she planned to charge 7.50 Euros/day. We said breathing shouldn’t be an optional feature of a room, and she waived the charge. I checked Booking.com afterward and found reviews about this particular room going back to at least September of 2021. Many people had forfeited their deposits and gone elsewhere. We would have done the same if that had been possible for us. Portuguese laws around short term rentals suggest properties need at least one window or balcony for proper ventilation. The narrow strip shown in the photos doesn’t qualify as proper ventilation. The Petit Hotels Mission Statement says, “Staying with us at our hotels, feels like resting under a tree in Madeira ... there is nothing more welcoming...” Management should try sleeping in Room 001 at Funchal Apartments. I’ve been happy with Booking.com so far. I find most properties are represented accurately, and the platform makes travel easy to arrange. This experience taught me to read all the reviews and sort from worst to best, rather than rely on the way your logarithm pushes out only positive statements. That part’s on me. But this room has been a known problem for years. It doesn’t meet code and is a health and safety violation. It’s shameful that it hasn’t been removed from your rotation. Attached are photos of the air conditioner, which isn’t an ideal fix, the plexi-glass covered terrace, and the strip that serves as the property’s sole “ventilation”.

I chose this place because nothing else was available, and I had to leave for the airport at 4am, so I wasn’t expecting much sleep anyway. For 15eur, the location is great and the host was responsive, so the price and position are hard to complain about too much. But the bad reviews about cleanliness and stale, smelly rooms are right. They also don’t provide towels. I wouldn’t stay again if I could book somewhere else, like 29 Madeira or Jaca. For just a few eur more, you’d get a much better experience, free towels and still a good location.

The good location and some lovely fellow guests were the main positives. Check-in was a mess: the manager, Iyad, made me wait 40 minutes even though he only had to cross the street. His manner came across as very arrogant. The beds were extremely uncomfortable and creaked with ordinary movement during the night.