New Vila Nova de Gaia Hilton hotel cost €40M, opens Monday

The Hilton Porto Gaia hotel, the second unit in Portugal by Hilton Hotels & Resorts, cost more than €40 million and opens on Monday, in the historic centre of Gaia, with 194 rooms, creating 100 jobs.

The new Hilton hotel is a five-star unit, with 194 rooms and suites, with an investment of more than €40 million, and opens to the public on Monday, at number 124 of Rua de Serpa Pinto, in Vila Nova de Gaia, after an intensive and careful requalification of the old Port wine warehouses, Paulo Almeida, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sabersal, Tourist and Real Estate Promotion, said on Thursday in a press conference.

The new Hilton Porto Gaia will allow more than 100 direct and indirect jobs, contributing actively to the local and regional economies, said the developers.

According to the general manager of Hilton Porto Gaia, Mónica Gonçalves, the new hotel unit has 32,000 square meters, a space that will bet on business tourism, but that is open to the city and all Portuguese people.

The group is aware of the current pandemic challenges but is convinced of the enormous added value that the new Hilton Porto Gaia will bring to the Porto-Gaia area.

“Our idea is to see these two cities together because our big goal is to bring big events. First of all, to develop the Porto and North destination. We [Hilton Porto Gaia] are the meeting point. We are the reception. We want authenticity. Our gastronomy is Portuguese. We will have the duck rice, but we will have the kid. We want the community of Porto and Gaia and the country to see what we have to offer,” she said.

The group refers that the hotel wants to be part of a strong collective and compete at the highest level on the international scene, whether in leisure tourism or in attracting major events to the region.

The Hilton Porto Gaia, which is the result of a franchising agreement with Sabersal – Promoção Turística e Imobiliária, S.A., has maintained the exterior design, reminiscent of the roofs of the traditional Port wine cellars, with the work developed by the architectural studio ARQ 2525 and led by Miguel Miranda.

Portuguese designer Nini de Andrade Silva designed the interior, who combined the comfort that characterises Hilton Hotels & Resorts’ properties with sophisticated and contemporary architecture and interior design.

The hotel is spread over eight floors, offering several complementary services, which can be enjoyed by the general public, namely a restaurant, a lobby bar, a panoramic bar, a spa using seaweed from Vila Nova de Gaia, and a gymnasium, equipped with a studio for clinical pilates and yoga.

The hotel unit also has several rooms for meetings and events, an auditorium with 300 seats and a ballroom with a capacity for about 600 people.

Both the auditorium and the ballroom have movable stages, ideal for presentations or exhibitions and cultural shows.

The Hilton Hotels & Resorts Group has over 590 hotels on six continents.