Legal
Booking terms
The cancellation table below is the part of this page people need, so it comes first. Everything after it is the detail that table assumes.
A stay at Dunara is a contract with CLICK-MART LIMITED, incorporated in England and Wales, company number 14111937, D-U-N-S 228941507, registered office 124 Islwyn Road, Cross Keys, Newport, Wales, NP11 7QJ — the company that built the estate and runs it. The accommodation is supplied at Dunara, between Melides and Carvalhal on the Alentejo coast.
These terms apply to a stay in any of the 88 keys and to use of the estate during it. A group of five keys or more, an event and a residence purchase are contracted separately and the contract says so on its face.
An enquiry, and then a booking
The reservation form on this site is an enquiry. It reaches a person, who checks the dates against what is open and answers — usually the same day, and within one working day at worst.
A booking exists when two things have happened: we have sent you a written confirmation carrying its reference, the suite type, the dates, the rate plan and the total; and the deposit that the plan requires has cleared. Both, not one.
Between the two we hold the suite for 72 hours so that a payment can be arranged without the dates moving underneath you. If the deposit has not cleared by then the hold lapses and the suite goes back on sale, which we tell you before it happens rather than afterwards.
Read the confirmation when it arrives. It is the operative document: where it and this page differ on a date, a total or a plan, the confirmation is right and we will have made a mistake here.
Deposit, balance and cancellation by rate plan
Three plans, plus two cases that carry their own schedule because the exposure is different. Your confirmation names which one applies.
| Rate plan | Deposit at confirmation | Balance due | Cancel free until | After that |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flexible | None. A valid card guarantees the suite and is authorised, not charged. | On arrival. | 14:00 three days before your arrival date. | One night is charged and the rest of the stay is released. |
| Advance | 30% of the accommodation total. | 14 days before arrival. | 30 days before arrival. | From 30 to 14 days, the deposit is retained. Inside 14 days, 50% of the stay. Inside 48 hours, the stay in full. |
| Fixed | 100% of the stay. | Paid in full at confirmation. | The dates move instead of cancelling — see the column to the right. | The amount paid is retained. One date change to any night within 12 months is made at no fee if you ask more than 30 days before arrival, subject to availability and to any difference in rate. |
| Lagoa Villa, on any plan | 30% of the accommodation total. | 60 days before arrival. | 60 days before arrival. | From 60 to 30 days, the deposit is retained. Inside 30 days, the stay in full. |
| 23 December to 2 January, any suite | 50% of the accommodation total. | 60 days before arrival. | 90 days before arrival. | From 90 to 30 days, the deposit is retained. Inside 30 days, the stay in full. Five nights is the minimum stay across these dates. |
A cancellation takes effect when it reaches us in writing, at the time it reaches us, and we reply with the position in figures. Amounts shown as a percentage are of the accommodation total before any municipal tourist tax. A refund goes back to the card or account it came from, within 14 days.
Paying, and what the rate includes
Rates are quoted and settled in euro. We take a credit or debit card, and a bank transfer for the Lagoa Villa, a group or an event. The card details go to the payment provider, not to us; our record keeps the last four digits and the authorisation reference, which is what a refund needs.
The rate covers the suite, service, and use of the nine bodies of water and the Athletic Club during your stay. Treatments from the spa menu, the tasting menu at MIRANTE, anything from the cellar and the bar, and the extra bed are charged on top and appear on one bill at departure.
Service is included and no service charge is added, at any of the five venues, ever. Portuguese value added tax is included at the rate in force on your dates. Where a municipal tourist tax applies it is shown as its own line on the confirmation and collected at the property.
Every price on this site is indicative. The total on your confirmation is the one that binds.
The rest of it, in order of how often it comes up
Check-in is from 15:00 and check-out is by 11:00. If your suite is ready earlier we will give it to you from 12:00 at no charge, which on most days it is.
A guaranteed arrival from 09:00 is half a night. A guaranteed departure at 15:00 is half a night and at 18:00 a full night, both subject to the next guest. Either way, baggage is held and the spa's changing rooms are open to you on both sides of the stay, so the gap is spent in the water rather than in a lobby.
A change of dates or suite asked more than 14 days before arrival is made at the rate available for the new dates, and we reissue the confirmation. Where the new rate is lower, the difference comes back to you.
Shortening a stay inside the cancellation window of your plan is treated as a cancellation of those nights under the table above.
The name of the lead guest can be changed once at no charge up to 48 hours before arrival. Adding or removing a guest is a change of occupancy, not of booking, and only needs telling us.
The suite is held overnight and released at 10:00 the following morning. Until then it is yours: a flight that lands at 03:00 is a late arrival, not a no-show, and telling us is enough.
Once released, the night is charged and the remaining nights are cancelled under the plan's inside-48-hours position. If you then reach us and the suite is still free, we would rather restore the booking than hold the position.
On Flexible, nights you do not take are refunded if you tell us by 11:00 on the day before the one you are releasing.
On Advance and Fixed, the stay as booked is payable. If you can see a departure coming, a date change asked before arrival is almost always the cheaper route, and the previous answer explains how to make one.
A Dune Room of 42 m² sleeps two. A Pine Suite of 58 m² sleeps two, with one extra bed. An Atlantic Suite of 96 m² sleeps four. The Lagoa Villa of 236 m² sleeps eight across four bedrooms.
A cot is provided at no charge. The extra bed, which the Pine Suite, the Atlantic Suite and the Lagoa Villa can take, is €65 a night, indicative. Occupancy above the figures above cannot be accommodated, because the figures come from the fire strategy rather than from the furniture.
Children are welcome across the estate. The children's pool is 0.5 m deep throughout and a child in any of the nine bodies of water is the responsibility of the adult they came with.
Two things carry an age: the Long Circuit of eleven hydrothermal stations, and any treatment that requires the spa health questionnaire, are for guests of 16 and over. So is the Athletic Club's equipment floor. The pools, the restaurants and the estate's walks are for everyone.
Tell us a child's age at booking if an extra bed or a cot is involved, so the room is set up before you walk into it rather than after.
Two dogs are welcome in the Lagoa Villa, in its walled garden, on the estate's sand paths and on the beach beyond the dune. The charge is €60 per dog per night, which covers a bed, bowls and the cleaning of the villa's soft furnishings afterwards.
The pavilions are kept clear of dogs because they share an air-handling circuit and a guest with an allergy has to be able to book one with confidence. Inside the pavilions, the spa and the restaurants, assistance dogs are the ones that come in — everywhere, without notice and without a charge.
Smoking is for the terraces, the courtyards and the open estate, where there is an ashtray wherever there is a chair.
Where a pavilion has been smoked in, the linen, the curtains and the air-handling filter are replaced or specially cleaned, and that work is €350. It is charged on the itemised basis described below, not as a penalty.
Things break on holiday and most of it is the house's cost, not yours. What we do charge for is damage beyond ordinary use, a missing item, or cleaning that takes a specialist.
We write to you first with the itemisation and photographs, and charge the card on file no earlier than seven days after that letter, so there is time to tell us we have it wrong. A door fob is €35. The Lagoa Villa's pool cover, which is the most expensive thing on the estate to misuse, is explained at handover.
A guest is responsible for their party, including a child and a dog.
Outdoors, from 23:00 to 08:00, the estate is quiet: no amplified music in a courtyard or on a terrace, and voices kept to the hour. The pavilions are single-storey with planted roofs and they sit close together, which is exactly why this matters here.
The bar runs to 01:00 and is the room the evening is meant to carry on in. A private party past 23:00 belongs in the event hall, where the structure was built for it.
Four of the 88 keys are specified for wheelchair access. Ask for one at the point of enquiry, because there are four and they book early.
Any other requirement — a hoist at the pool, a hearing loop at a dinner, a step-free route briefed in advance, a menu at 18 pt — reaches the right department if you give us 14 days, and we will usually manage it on less. The access statement sets out what exists; an accessibility note is handled as described in the privacy notice.
Five keys or more on one booking is a group, and it is contracted separately with its own deposit and cancellation schedule, stated in that contract rather than taken from the table above.
The whole estate — 88 keys, the event hall, the six seating configurations and the two restaurants — can be taken. That conversation starts on the events page.
Take travel insurance, and take it when you book rather than before you travel. The cancellation table above is a commercial position and it does not bend for an illness, a cancelled flight or a change at work; an insurer's does. We are not an insurer and have no interest in any policy you buy.
When neither of us can help it
Some things stop a stay that are outside what either of us can reasonably control: extreme weather on an exposed Atlantic coast, wildfire, flood, an official restriction on travel or on opening, a failure of the water or power supply to the estate, or industrial action beyond our own workforce.
Where one of those prevents us from giving you the stay you booked, we tell you as soon as we know and you choose between three things: the same nights moved to the next equivalent dates that work for you; a credit for everything paid, valid 18 months and usable on anything the estate sells; or a refund of everything paid for nights not taken, within 14 days.
Where a genuinely unrecoverable third-party cost has already been committed on your instruction, we name it, show it, and take it out of the refund rather than round it. That is rare and it is never the accommodation itself.
A change in your own plans, your health or your work is a different thing. The cancellation table governs that, and insurance is the instrument built for it.
If something is wrong
During the stay, tell the duty manager. Almost everything that goes wrong in a hotel can be fixed the same evening, and an estate of 88 keys has the slack to do it. A complaint raised on departure is a complaint we could have solved on the second night.
Afterwards, email [email protected] with your reference. We acknowledge within five working days and give a substantive answer within 20 working days; if an answer needs longer than that we tell you why and when, before the twenty days are up.
If our answer does not settle it, Portuguese law gives a consumer access to an alternative dispute resolution entity competent for the Alentejo Litoral. We will name the competent entity in writing on request and take part in the process. Your statutory rights as a consumer are untouched by anything on this page.
Law, and the law of where you live
This contract is governed by the law of England and Wales, where the contracting company is incorporated, and the courts of England and Wales have non-exclusive jurisdiction.
If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, you keep every protection your own country's mandatory law gives you, including the right to bring a claim where you live. Portuguese law also applies to the estate itself, which is why we register guests on arrival as the law there requires and why any municipal tourist tax is collected at the property.
These terms are reviewed every twelve months. A revision applies to bookings confirmed after it is published, never to one already confirmed.
Dates, suites, and a rate for them
The stay planner holds the rate calendar and the four suite types. An enquiry from it reaches a person, not a queue.