We picked the hotel for our honeymoon. D’Alma is a charming hotel and the suite was fresh, stylish, clean and had everything we needed. Location wise, the hotel is at the heart of some of Porto’s most historic streets and close to restaurants etc.
As with many buildings in that part of Porto, major renovation works are happening in the building directly adjoining the hotel. On the first morning of our honeymoon we were woken at 7am to the sound of extremely loud and constant drilling. Since we’d had such an early start to the day, we came back for a rest in the afternoon but loud banging continued until gone 6pm. This pattern repeated for 3 days. I fully appreciate that the hotel can’t help the fact of this work, but I do think they could have handled it better. We knew nothing about the issue in advance and when we politely mentioned it, apparently we were the first people to complain about the noise. Either we were very unlucky with the works in relation to our bedroom or the other guests are extremely deep sleepers. Some kind of sweetener (even just a glass of Port) to apologise for our ruined mornings would have been a bare minimum gesture, in my opinion.
Further, there was no personal touch at this hotel. I had made them aware that it was our honeymoon and they didn’t make any congratulations. The significantly cheaper airport hotel we stayed at on our last night gave us a bottle of wine and put petals on our bed. D’alma’s hospitality was a little underwhelming.
