The Vine Hotel in Funchal

We stayed at the Vine Hotel for our honeymoon and for new years. The hotel is lovely and staff friendly, with cleaners asking each day if we would like our room cleaned which was lovely. They also left us prosecco and chocolates with a nice note to celebrate our honeymoon and we had a gorgeous couples massage by Katerina & Emma in the spa. On the first day at breakfast they also noted that I was vegan and gave me tofu & seitan which I greatly appreciated. One negative however, was that hotel residents who chose not to pay for the very pricey new years eve gala dinner were subjugated to their bedrooms and had no access to the bar. If I had known this is how we would be treated I would have booked somewhere to go for the evening outside of the hotel. The rooftop new years celebrations were the main reason I booked this hotel but to be told we couldn't access the bar on new years eve in the hotel we were staying at was very disappointing. The receptionist also treated us very poorly by being quite blunt. They backtracked and said we could have a drink at 10:30pm but this was pretty poor treatment in my view. We still had a lovely stay overall but just a shame about the lack of planning for residents on new years eve.

A team tried hard to be creative with the hotel design, but it feels like design was prioritized over functionality.

Design Suite Review: Overall a spacious room with a walk-in closet, nice bathtub, and roomy shower. Faults: Lights in the walk-in closet didn't work and turned off after 15 seconds. Room lights were glitchy and needed to be reset on the master panel. Motion sensors would automatically turn on a light that was too bright if you got up from bed at night - disrupting anyone else sleeping in the room. There was no room to plug in our travel adapters on the desk, with no other place to plug them in. There was no Juliet-style balcony as listed in the room description, just windows facing the interior buildings/courtyard. Air conditioning did not work properly as it never felt cooler than 21C despite having it set at 16C.

The rooftop pool is a nice place to chill with decent food offerings. The term "jacuzzi" is used to describe the small pool on the rooftop and spa, but it is simply a normal pool - not heated nor with jets. Free parking is a plus. Location is central and located in a mall entrance. Overall, we were disappointed in the hotel due to the misleading amenities and poor design functionality for the price. We would choose to stay elsewhere next time.