Hello Lisbon Bairro Alto Apartments

Our studio had two queen beds, which worked well for our family of four, and the apartment was well kept with a fully equipped kitchen. It’s in Bairro Alto, Lisbon’s pub district. I wish housekeeping had come more often: over our four-night stay, they cleared the litter only on the third day. Weekends can get very noisy, with locals and tourists pub-crawling until the early morning.

The staff were helpful, and the apartment was clean and had air conditioning. It’s right in the bar district, though, with bars just below. Noise picked up after midnight and carried on until 2 a.m., so we couldn’t really sleep.

The apartment was nice, very clean, and well located. The trouble came after checkout: our luggage was still there, but our access code had expired, so we couldn’t get back in to collect it. There wasn’t anyone on hand, and it took a while to reach someone. We nearly missed our flight home. Communication needs to be better.

We used to love staying at Hello Lisbon, and it’s sad to feel the place going downhill. After this stay, our third at the Bairro Alto property, we’ll probably look elsewhere next time. We’d stayed there twice before and knew the routine: no staff on site, a code for the front door, and lockers for bags before check-in. Our first-floor room was familiar, with an Ikea kitchen, a comfortable bed, and windows facing the busy Bairro Alto streets. Several parts of the new check-in setup were frustrating. At 6 a.m., the emailed door code didn’t work. We had to use the outside intercom and were given three more codes before one finally opened the door. Later, the kiosk struggled to process the hotel tax on a credit card, then kept spinning when we tried a debit card. My wife suggested entering the PIN, even though the reader hadn’t asked for it, and that did the trick. Passport scanning also took repeated attempts because it had to be placed in exactly the right spot. There’s no air-conditioning in that area, so the whole process left us hot and annoyed. The kiosk is hard to use and feels like a waste of money. Other things had changed too. The shower dispenser for shampoo, conditioner, and body wash had been taken out, leaving its fittings on the tile. The generic bottles provided weren’t good quality, and replacing a dispenser with several plastic bottles each day seems less environmentally friendly. We also planned to wash clothes before heading to the Algarve, but there were no instructions for the combination washer-dryer. We couldn’t figure it out and would have appreciated some guidance. At the Santos property after our weekend in the Algarve, the room door code didn’t work, although the building code did. We had to call again while sweating in the stairwell. That apartment also had no washer-dryer instructions, no shower dispenser, and no toiletries. There are plenty of other serviced apartments nearby, so we’ll try somewhere else on our next visit, even though we always wanted to stay with Hello Lisbon.