Pestana Vila Lido Madeira Ocean Hotel

The staff are so friendly and smiley. The sea family suite is beautifully decorated, spacious and has some lovely touches. The food is also delicious!

We just returned from an unforgettable stay and can honestly say it’s a hidden gem that checks every single box.

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### 🌊 Unbeatable Location & Views
The hotel sits right on the **first line of the sea**, offering a level of tranquility that is hard to find. It’s located in a perfect "sweet spot"—far enough from the hustle of Funchal to enjoy quiet, calm evenings, but close enough that a quick Uber or bus ride puts you right in the heart of the city.

**The Highlight:** The sea view is everywhere. Whether you are waking up in your room or enjoying a meal, the horizon is your constant companion. If you time your dinner right, the **sunsets** are absolutely breathtaking.

### 🛌 The Ultimate Sleep Experience
I’ve never stayed at a hotel that takes sleep this seriously!
* **Modern Rooms:** The decor is fresh and contemporary, but the real star is the balcony overlooking the ocean.
* **The Pillow Menu:** This was a game-changer. If you aren't happy with your pillow, you can simply request a different type. They even offer **ergonomic memory foam** options!
* **Comfort:** The beds are incredibly high-quality, ensuring you actually wake up feeling refreshed.

### 🧖‍♂️ Spa & "Sea-to-Sauna" Access
The spa area is **free of charge** for guests, which is a fantastic bonus. We loved spending time in the sauna and then having the unique luxury of jumping directly into the sea (or the pool) to cool off. It is the ultimate wellness ritual.

### 🍽️ A Culinary Delight
The food at Vila Lido is far beyond standard hotel fare.
* **Breakfast & Dinner:** Both are served with stunning views of the water.
* **Variety:** The menus are diverse and everything we tasted was delicious.
* **A La Carte Excellence:** We highly recommend the hotel’s own restaurant. We opted for the **three-course menus** every evening, and the quality was consistently top-tier.

### 🌟 Five-Star Service
What truly makes this hotel special is the staff. They are remarkably **motivated, friendly, and proactive**. No matter what we needed assistance with, they handled it with a smile. You truly feel like a valued guest here, not just a room number.

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**Bottom Line:** We had a spectacular time and are already planning our return to **Vila Lido**. Whether you want to relax by the pool, enjoy gourmet meals, or sleep on the perfect pillow, we cannot recommend this hotel enough to everyone visiting Madeira!

The location was great with easy access to local restaurants and supermarkets. Near to bus routes into Funchal and other places of interest. The rooms are spacious, nicely decorated and have an outside space to relax and take in the view. The staff were generally very friendly and helpful. The pool bar staff were lovely, restaurant staff mostly good. Reception staff also mostly good. Housekeeping did not replenish the complimentary coffee/teas which was a little irritating as we had to purchase our own from the local shop. The pool area is lovely and kept beautifully clean. Overall a good stay, despite all the rain!

Hotel is located directly on the see side. You see the see and nearly nothing else. Walking distance to (10-15 minutes) to Funchal ( Capitol ).
Garden, pool and other facilities are well maintained.
Staff is friendly and well trained.
The rooms are tastefully renovated, clean, spacious, and well-furnished. The bathroom lighting is a bit dim for applying makeup. The shower and bidet work perfectly. The faucet water flow rate at the sink are reduced for ecological or economic reasons at a level which is annoying.
Breakfast and buffet are very good.
We enjoyed our stay very much. We will come again.

Had a perfect stay! Staff very friendly and very clean hotel, with lovely food

1 week stay at Pestana Vila lido (B&B). Room spacious and well kept. Wide selection at breakfast. Theme evening at à la carte Restaurant excellent - wonderful service and food. Highly recommend

Outstanding stay. The room very clean, comfortable, and well-designed. Staff professional and efficient, and everything—from check-in to Wi-Fi—worked seamlessly. High-quality experience without the fluff.

Very good location, walking distance to Funchal, excelent spa, spatious room, very good breakfast

First of all, the full body Rebalance massage done by Leticia was one of the best massages that I've experienced recently. She's also a Reiki practitioner and has wonderful energy about her. ✨️💫🌟💚 I hope I'll get to experience the magic touch of her hands again. Highly recommended. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

The location of this hotel is absolutely fantastic right on the ocean front with uninterrupted views (we stayed in the round hotel building on the 6th floor). Mind you, it was rather windy when we arrived so we could feel and hear the howling wind too. 🫣🤣

Our room was spacious, airy, light and cosy. It had a balcony facing west so perfect for watching sunsets. ☀️ Small bottles of mineral water and sparkling passion fruit soft drink are left each day in the room.

There was a wonderful "Welcome" hand written card and gifts waiting for us in our room upon arrival. 💚

The breakfast buffet was lovely too with plenty of choice, eg all types of eggs and even freshly to order made omelette, different meats, cheese, salad, fruits, bakery goods, good coffee and pastries too.

A wonderful experience overall and we would definitely return here. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟💚

Wow what a fabulous place to stay. From the moment we arrived we were welcomed with a smile and very friendly staff on reception, at breakfast and in the restaurant. Our room was spotless and cleaned daily with replenishment of water and soft drinks in the fridge. The view from our balcony was amazing and listening to the sea at night was a lovely calm way to fall asleep in a comfortable bed. On my special birthday a cake was left in our room and a “towel “ cake creation which was left until we departed, a lovely touch. The location is perfect, about a 30 minute walk to Funchal centre or a bus at the top of the road. Reception staff were extremely helpful when we discovered that the cable cars weren’t working giving us advice on how to catch a bus, where to get it and a bus timetable. The pool area was clean and plenty of sun loungers to choose from. We can’t wait to return.

We really enjoyed our stay. The room was very good, everything clean and tidy. The staff was very nice and helpful. I highly recommend staying there 😊

We ended up here when our flight was cancelled.
We got a Superior Sea View room on the 8th floor which was fantastic. Large balcony with wonderful sea view.
Breakfast and food were taken in the buffet restaurant and were quite ok.
Very close to a large supermarket with a large selection of food and drinks.

The bad: Avoid dining at Vila Lido. The chef seemed to have followed a recipe but missed several crucial details, resulting in the worst meal I’ve ever had at any restaurant. The waitress was completely clueless about wines.

The Good: Had room at floor 1, it was ok nice and clean with ok view. Breakfast ar floor 5 was good had everything. Very friendly personell and very nice to kids.
We didn’t know that mosquitos has dengue at Madeira learned that on the plane home. Had some mosquitos at the room…

We have stayed at the Pestana Vila Lido hotel on 2 occasions now, once in February 2024 and December 2025 a 2 week stay each holiday
On the first visit we were upgraded by the Manager to a Side Sea View Suite Room 819 as there was a couple of minor issues with our initial Side Sea View Room, we thought at that time there was a strange odour in the Side sea view suite room, especially late evening, the odour can only be related to a sewage smell, something like a blocked stench pipe or similar, we didn't complain at the time as it wasn't too offensive, but is was evident.
This Hotel is branded as a 5 Star Hotel and it's unique architecture, grounds and position you would think it would warrant the 5 Star status, but sadly and more apparent on this holiday is that the odour is still present, but a lot stronger on this holiday, the room we stayed in was 820A a very expensive Side Sea View Suite, for which we had saved for the best part of the year, we arrived on the 30th November and on the 1st December after getting someone from reception to Investigate the smell, this was at 22.00hrs we were asked if we wanted to move rooms, initially to a lower floor and not the same specification side sea view room, but eventually we were offered the same specification room on the same level 8th floor, It was gone 23.00hrs by the time we got moved.
The new room was ok, the stench wasn't there but you could still smell it in the corridor at times, again mostly late evening, there is a definite sewage issue on the West side of the hotel, which the management team are very aware of but seem reluctant or can't do anything about it, our initial side sea view suite would be allocated to new arrivals the next day who would possibly go through the same routine as we did, what sort of 5 Star policy is this I ask myself, is this acceptable?
The other major issue with this Hotel is that it has no soul or atmosphere, the staff go about there work professionally but in the bar areas and restaurants there is no ambiance, guest artistes play to themselves mostly.
One or 3 other wrinkles which really bugged me personally is that we had to call reception to have our room cleaned which is not ideal when you venture out for a big part of the day and also in the Breakfast restaurant there was one rotating toaster, which unfortunately didn't rotate(we are waiting for parts, was the answer when the question was asked)with no warning notice in sight either, so people would pop in a couple of slices of toast and wander off to come back to their static burnt toast, this toaster was later changed to a non rotating open grill toaster, which took about 10mins to toast 2 slices of bread, with 14 to 16 Pestana Hotels and Residencies on the Island I would have thought there would have been a spare toaster to be had somewhere and thirdly, Be Aware, It is the Hotel Policy to add Service Charges on everything you purchase at the Hotel, say you go to the Pool Bar and order a coffee to take away - Service charge added, a beer at the Bar, Service Charge etc etc etc these add up, Tipping is optional on the Island of Madeira, we would like to make our own mind up on tipping for good service etc, the good news is is that the charges are not compulsory, it's optional so when you finalise your account you can get the charges removed, it's just another way the Pestana Group can claw every single cent out of you whilst on holiday, even the guy on reception said it wasn't right, whats that say about the company.
I'm not sure what else to say about this hotel really, we tried it for a 2nd time because it looks the part and is exactly what we want out of a holiday with the Pool and access to the sea to swim, but as the title of this review suggests(All is not as it seems)
We have stayed with the Pestana Group Hotels Madeira on 3 Occasions now 6 weeks in total, and each time for whatever reason we have had to change rooms.
The hotel for the duration of our stay wasn't very busy, and with storm warnings and flight cancellations on the 12th 13th December the Hotel was topped up with guests from cancelled flights, You could say that Pestana Vila Lido stepped up to the plate to accommodate these additional guests I would say to the expense of letting their guard down on room service etc for the normal guests as mentioned earlier, but with a Monetary gain to be had for the group, letting a few normal paying guests down doesn't seem to be an issue.
We won't be staying with Pestana Group Hotels again if we ever decide to visit Madeira in the future, It's possible that companies become that big that they lose themselves in what Holiday makers really want out of the experience.
The worrying part of this is that there are reviews of this Hotel on Trust Pilot stating more or less the same issues but nothing is ever done to rectify the Issues it seems.
Just Cut and Paste apologies from the Management.
This Hotel with its Uniqueness and enviable position should be one of the best on the Island but sadly it isn't only in our opinion of course, visitors will make up their own mind up I'm sure.

Ocean swimming, Beautiful surroundings, friendly and efficient staff! Really enjoyed our stay here. Also really enjoyed a massage at the spa with Leticia, so relaxing.

We spent 5 days at Vila Pestana Lido Hotel in Madeira.

The check-in staff was efficient and helpful. Christian the front desk steward explained everything we needed to know about the hotel, local tours and restaurants. Christian is certainly an asset to this hotel.

Our room was a balcony room on the 8th floor facing “sunrise” and on the ocean.
- The room and balcony were extremely spacious compared to most we’ve stayed in.
- Views were picturesque.
- The beds may be more firm than some prefer.
- The included breakfast in the “Flor do Mar” restaurant was just OK, however, the view was spectacular!
- One major issue was that there was a “rancid odor” in the bathroom that the maintenance staff could not remedy during our stay.
- “Housekeeping” was not great either. In hotel of this caliber we expect glasses and coffee cups to be replaced daily and all surfaces to be properly cleaned … this did not occur.

One evening we dined in the Pastana Lido’s “A La Carte” dining room. The menu, cuisine and service were all excellent!

The hotel is nice but not 5 star and feels a bit dated. Some services require tuning.

Our second holiday here this summer - me and my elderly mother. Perfect location for us with a lovely room. Breakfast was always delicious, the hotel very clean and all staff wonderful. Special thanks to José on reception who showed us some suites as we will be booking again for June 2026 and bringing my sister.

We have never stayed at this hotel, but have stayed nearby for over twenty years, and regularly used the bar here. Last year we were very disappointed as the bar was understaffed with one young lady struggling to cope. This year was much improved, and I must mention the staff member whose name is on my receipts - Abul Shafee. He was friendly, efficient and very professional. A staff member well worth keeping on.

Excellent venue and very friendly staff, especially Gaudino Viera and the bar staff.
The rooms are also well appointed and kept clean by friendly housekeepers

Lovely hotel, good sized room, breakfast plentiful. My only slight complaint is that they didn’t refresh the tea and coffee station with enough milk pots for the 2 of us which when you get in at 10 after a day out and you need a cuppa, we couldn’t have one!