Pestana Carlton Madeira Hotel

Hotel very well located, excellent room, clean and comfortable. Competent, friendly and organization. Well-cooked meals. Magnificent outdoor swimming pools. Safe place. 3* car parks. Recommendable hotel, without a doubt.

Large room with great view, very clean. Amazing pools, excellent location: the center of Funchal is about 10-12 minutes walk. Friendly staff. Tasty food, main reataurant with fantastic view on the ocean.

The main reason we chose this hotel was because there is an excellent dive centre (Madeira Divepoint) based there so it was very convenient, given that the main point of the holiday was to dive. Our room was on the 2nd floor with a pool view & these rooms have terraces rather than a small balcony. The room was reasonably sized & the cleaning staff kept it spotless. There is lots of storage space but not many hangers in the wardrobe. There was a good sized safe (no extra cost) in the room & wifi (strong signal). According to the hotel's website there should have been bathrobes, slippers & tea/coffee making facilities but we only had the bathrobes & one pair of slippers. The slippers had been put on the top shelf of the wardrobe & we only found them when checking that we had packed all our belongings at the end of the holiday. The hotel website said that the rooms either have double beds or 2 singles pushed together but we got a king sized bed & it was just one mattress, not two pushed together. So that was a bonus we weren't expecting. All the public areas were kept very clean. There are 2 outdoor pools with plenty of sunbeds. There are also other areas both inside & out with seating. The hotel wasn't full when we were there but even if it was full I think there would be plenty of places for people to sit out. We only booked breakfast & had our evening meals out - there are plenty of good restaurants within easy walking distance & more a short taxi ride (or a longer walk) away. The breakfast buffet was excellent with a good selection of hot & cold food. Some items were available every day whilst others were varied. We generally went for breakfast early, soon after they opened & all options were available - I've stayed in hotels where some options weren't ready until 30 minutes or more after they opened so this was a nice change. A bonus for me was that the hot drinks machines offered a choice of decaf coffees - normally I'm lucky to get decaf let alone a choice! And it was very good decaf coffee. The hotel has done it's best to make the hotel covid safe & masks are required in all indoor public spaces. In the restaurant each time we went to the buffet we had our hands sprayed with sanitiser & then we were given a pair of tongs to serve our food. You have to get a fresh pair each time. The buffet is split into 2 & once you've used your tongs on one side you had to get a fresh pair if you wanted to go to the other side. Once you've chosen a table a member of staff brings cutlery & a napkin in individual packets. All the staff that we came in contact with were very friendly & helpful. A special thank you goes to Lizbeth, the Guest Relations manager. We had problems getting appointments for our free return covid tests via the Madeira Safe website. Lizbeth sorted it out for us & got us booked in at the nearby hospital. One small complaint - I had to queue for ages to check out as many people have bills to pay & some people were checking in, which takes a while. It would help if there was a fast track check-out for anyone who only has to hand in their keys. We mainly chose the hotel for the convenience of being so close to the dive centre but having stayed there we would definitely go back as the hotel turned out to be very good. I would recommend it, particularly if you want easy access to the sea as Madeira has very few beaches & the only other option is to pay for the lidos.