Yeatman Hotel to get 26 additional bedrooms

Porto’s luxury Yeatman Hotel is to gain an extra 26 bedrooms to meet increasing demand for top-end accommodation in the Portuguese city, according to Adrian Bridge.

Inside The Yeatman, which will soon have over 100 bedrooms

Bridge, who is CEO of the hotel and The Fladgate Partnership, which owns Taylor’s Port, told the drinks business last month that he was building additional bedrooms to cater for the increasing number of tourists coming to Porto, the entry point for the Douro wine region, which is the source of Port.

Citing the Arab Spring as a possible cause of the augmentation in visitor numbers, he suggested that tourists are choosing Portugal over North African nations and other holiday destinations because the European country was considered “safe”.

Currently, Bridge said that he had “a queue of people” who were waiting for cancellations so they could stay at The Yeatman, adding, “So with 26 new rooms we can raid that waiting list”.

The new bedrooms will be constructed in a similar style and to the same proportions and standards as the existing rooms, and, like all other rooms at The Yeatman, they will have a view of the north bank of the city and the River Douro.

Every room at the hotel has a view of the river, and The Yeatman has a swimming pool in the shape of a Port decanter

However, one of the rooms will be a suite with its own plunge pool that will become the best bedroom at The Yeatman, supplanting the Bacchus suite, which is currently the most expensive room in the hotel, costing €1,500 per night.

Bridge told db that he was adding 26 rooms because that was the maximum number he could fit on the new site, which is adjacent to the Yeatman, and was acquired by the hotel for €1m.

The extra building will cost €5 million to construct, almost one sixth of the original cost of the hotel, which Bridge said had cost €32m to build on a site he had bought for €6.5m

Last month, Bridge opened a new ferry service to take tourists from one side of the Douro to the other in an attempt to improve the access for visitors to the city of Porto to the Port lodges, which are located in Vila Nova de Gaia, on the south bank of the River Douro (beneath The Yeatman Hotel).

He said it was necessary as currently the only way to cross the river is using the Dom Luís I bridge, which has extremely narrow walkways for pedestrians, making it dangerous.

One room in The Yeatman contains a bed made out of an old wooden Port vat

Highlighting the challenges of setting up the ferry service he said, “It has taken 20 months to put the ferry together and it took us 20 months to build The Yeatman.”

The Yeatman currently has 83 rooms costing upwards of €270 per night, and contains a Michelin-starred restaurant and a spa.

The south bank of the Douro where the Port lodges are based is not actually part of the city of Porto, but within a separate town called Vila Nova de Gaia. However, Bridge said that the he sees The Yeatman as part of the city.

As previously reported by db, Bridge is also starting work on a €100 million visitor attraction called The World of Wine, which will be located in former Port wine warehouses immediately beneath The Yeatman hotel.

Occupying more than 30,000 m2, the planned facility will incorporate a museum on the history of Porto, a museum on the cork industry, a wine school, a slow food restaurant and events space, along with nine further restaurants, a retail area, and a fashion and design museum to celebrate the textile industry of northern Portugal.