Oporto Trindade Residence

The view is nice, but that’s because the room is on the top floor of a seven-storey building, directly under a flat roof. You can imagine the heat. The room was worn down, the floor tiles were coming apart, and the shower had mould. There was no air conditioning, just an old, sad fan that couldn’t keep up. Opening the window didn’t help, since it faced a very busy street and a subway station. Sleeping was impossible. The room was barely furnished: a bed and a shelf, with no table or bedside lamp. Half the furniture shown in the Booking.com pictures wasn’t there. Some items supposedly included in the room were missing too, including a wardrobe, table, Wi-Fi and reading lamp. The TV was disconnected and nearly fell off its little table when nudged. There were mint tea bags and two mugs arranged on a pointless shelf beneath a picture of nicer parts of Porto, but no kettle. The liquid soap was called saudade, the Portuguese word for longing. Those details might have seemed funny in other circumstances. The place was hugely overpriced and very low quality, and the descriptions and pictures were deceptive. Check-in was already strange: we had to collect the keys from a shop called Oporto AL store selling cosmetics, 15 minutes from the apartment, with no sign that it was a check-in point. They sent the check-in information through WhatsApp rather than Booking.com, and handled everything else there too. There’s no reception or anyone at the accommodation. Maybe it’s to avoid complaints, or just cut costs. A ghost hotel. The residence lists facilities that aren’t listed for individual rooms, which seems like a way to cover themselves against complaints and make people think they’ll get those things. There’s clearly something off about having to collect keys at a distant retail shop, using WhatsApp instead of Booking.com, and the misleading descriptions and photos. We paid far too much. This is the worst kind of profit maximising I’ve seen in a long time. Please don’t make the same mistake. See the pictures for yourself.