Canopy by Hilton Vilamoura: Hilton’s Boutique Brand Drops Anchor at the Marina

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New name, new look, same five courses next door.

Hilton has chosen Vilamoura to launch Canopy by Hilton in Portugal, and the former Dom Pedro Marina is the hotel getting the makeover. It doesn’t open until September 2027, but rooms for stays from 15 September 2027 can already be booked. For once, golfers who plan ahead are rewarded for it.

Generated rendition of the upcoming Canopy Hotel in Vilamoura

From Dom Pedro to Canopy

The Dom Pedro Marina has long been a familiar base for golfers in Vilamoura. It’s a short stroll from the marina and 500 metres from Praia da Vilamoura. Its owners, Details Hospitality (part of Arrow Global), are now turning it into Canopy by Hilton Vilamoura: 155 rooms, a spa, an outdoor pool, a fitness centre and Canopy Central, the brand’s restaurant and bar. (Hospitality Net)

Generated rendition of Canopy Common areaGenerated rendition of Canopy standard room

Canopy aims for boutique rather than big-box: easy-going service, comfortable rooms and a strong local flavour. Think of it as Hilton without the conference lanyards.

genereated rendition of Canopy SuiteGenerated rendition of Canopy restaurant
Five Courses on the Doorstep

Details built the new hotel in partnership with Vilamoura Golf, which is a polite way of saying the golf is the point. Frank Pennink’s 1969 Old Course leads a line-up that also includes Pinhal, Laguna, Millennium and The Els Club Vilamoura. All five are a few minutes from the lobby.

Our golf package includes a free shuttle to the first tee, preferred tee times between 9:00 and 11:00 on selected dates, a free pull trolley and 10% off in the pro shop. There’s VIP treatment on arrival too, which after the Faro taxi queue will feel thoroughly earned.

After the Eighteenth

The marina’s waterfront restaurants are a five-minute walk away. That means grilled dourada, a cold carafe of vinho verde, and yachts you can pretend to be shopping for.

Vilamoura Casino is just round the corner, for anyone whose short game needs a different kind of gamble.

Vilamoura marina on a summer evening, Algarve, with waterfront restaurants and moored yachts

Why Book Now

Stays open from 15 September 2027. That’s the start of the Algarve’s autumn golf season, when the courses are in prime condition and daytime temperatures sit in the mid to high twenties. A launch discount is available on bookings confirmed by 31 March 2027.

There’s also something to be said for being among a new hotel’s first guests: fresh rooms, staff keen to impress, and bragging rights over the rest of the four-ball. Nobody will believe you only went for the golf.

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Browse our Algarve golf holidays and reserve your room at Canopy by Hilton Vilamoura for autumn 2027.

Palmares Comes Out of Surgery: All Three Nines Return Renovated

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Wider fairways, fewer bunkers, a fifth less watering. Palmares has had a busy summer.

Anyone who played Palmares this summer will mostly remember the earthworks. The Alvor and Praia loops closed in turn, and green fees stayed firmly in place for a course that was very obviously mid-operation. A few visitors said so in public reviews. The patient has now been discharged.

Why It Matters for the Algarve

The improvements made to Palmares Golf Course have not only enhanced the quality of the course itself but, more importantly, have also added significant value to the overall offering of Algarve golf courses, further strengthening the region’s reputation as a world-class golf destination.

What Has Changed

All three nines — Alvor, Lagos and Praia — have been reworked to improve conditioning, playing surfaces and landscaping. Every tee is being resurfaced with a grass better suited to the Algarve climate and every bunker rebuilt with new sand. A new short-game area and a larger putting green are going in too, along with an entirely new fleet of greenkeeping machinery. (Golf Business News)

Palmares, one of three revamped nine-hole loops

Robert Trent Jones II Golf Course Architects oversaw the design work. Its president, Bruce Charlton, says the aim was to raise the “fun factor” for every level of golfer, chiefly by widening fairways and replacing sand with short grass around many of the greens. Some bunkers have also been moved and reshaped to follow Trent Jones Jr’s original strategy. This may sound like a kindness to the high handicapper. Anyone who has faced Palmares’s quick, heavily contoured greens from a tight lie will know better. (Golf Business News)

A Fifth Less Water

The quieter part of the project may matter most. The greenkeepers will now concentrate irrigation on the main playing surfaces, with the aim of cutting the area the resort waters by 20 per cent. It should lower running costs as well as water use. (Golf Today)

The Praia nine at Palmares

In a region where every summer brings fresh headlines about reservoir levels, that is a sensible line to draw. The fringes may look a little more Portuguese and a little less Augusta. Nobody came here for Augusta.

Three Nines, Three Characters

Palmares opened in 1975 as an eighteen-hole Frank Pennink design. In 2011 Robert Trent Jones Jr reworked the layout and added a third nine. All three loops start and finish beside the clubhouse on the hill, then descend through a 200-hectare amphitheatre towards Meia Praia and the Bay of Lagos. (Golf Course Architecture)

Drone view of Palmares from the sea

The Alvor is mostly parkland, and the Lagos mixes parkland with links. The Praia crosses the railway line to play links-style golf among the dunes, which makes it one of the few rounds in the Algarve where the railway timetable is part of the local knowledge.

Off the Course

The clubhouse, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning RCR Arquitectes, was named World’s Best Clubhouse at the 2025 World Golf Awards and is now home to Preceito, the resort’s new signature restaurant. Palmares has also joined the European Tour Destinations network, and Portugal’s first JW Marriott is due to open on site in 2028.

Until then, the adults-only Palmares Beach House Hotel, with twenty rooms looking over the course to the sea, is the obvious base. Lagos is ten minutes away, with Tivoli Lagos and Iberostar Selection Lagos Algarve for those who prefer an old town and a plate of grilled fish within walking distance.

Palmares Golf Resort with the sea in the background

Part of a Bigger Plan

Palmares is managed by Details, Portugal’s largest golf course operator, which looks after thirteen venues for Arrow Global. Its co-CEO, Nuno Sepúlveda, is unusually candid about the reason for the work: it was needed “to bring the golf course back up to the standards that a place like Palmares deserves.” “Back up” is not a phrase you often meet in a press release. After September’s reopening of the North Course at Monte Rei, he adds, “it made perfect sense for Palmares to be next.”

Gonzaga Liniers, who became general manager as the diggers arrived, expects Palmares to rank among the best golf destinations in Europe within two years, and says that “won’t just be down to the golf.” It is a bold timetable. The course, at least, is ready now. (Golf Business News)

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Browse our Palmares golf course page and book a round on the new-look nines before word gets round, or make a week of it with our full list of Algarve golf courses.

Europe’s Mid-Amateurs Tee Up at Palmares

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Eighty golfers, fifty-four holes, and not one of them doing it for a living.

Mid-amateur golf is the game’s best-kept secret: players over 25 who have kept their amateur status, their day jobs and, in this field, some quite alarming handicaps. From Friday 30 October to Sunday 1 November, the best of them are in Lagos for the 9th Portuguese International Mid-Amateur Championship at Palmares. Run by the Portuguese Golf Federation and counting for the World Amateur Golf Ranking, it moves to the Algarve after last year’s edition at Troia. (FPG)

Palmares golf course in Lagos with the sea in the background

The office can wait until Monday.

The Field

The final entry lists carry 60 men and 20 women from more than a dozen countries. Sweden sends the largest party, with 11 men; Germany and Portugal have nine apiece, and Ireland six. Top of the men’s list is Germany’s Florian Dittrich, off plus 5.2 — a handicap that suggests the day job is not especially demanding. Compatriot Yannic Völker (+4) and Sweden’s Jonas Olsson (+3.9) follow him in. (FPG entry list)

Ireland’s Aideen Walsh (+3.2) leads the women’s list, ahead of Belgium’s Elsie Verhoeven (+2.8). (FPG entry list) Neither of last year’s champions, Sweden’s Hampus Wijkstrom and Germany’s Silvia Wilms, is on the lists, so both titles are up for grabs. Wijkstrom won at Troia with a closing 66; we covered it here.

The Home Contingent

Portugal’s hopes rest on players in form on the Federation’s own Mid-Amateur & Senior Circuit. Pedro Sá Lima and Marta Lampreia have both won two of this year’s circuit events, at Amendoeira O’Connor and Quinta de Cima, and Lampreia took the mid-amateur and senior titles on each occasion. Neither appears to have much use for second place. (FPG)

Scott Blackshear, twice this season’s circuit senior champion, has the most useful advantage of all: Palmares is his home club. Ricardo Soares, the best Portuguese finisher at Troia last year, is also back.

The Course

Palmares has 27 holes, redesigned by Robert Trent Jones Jr., running between dunes, woodland and hills above the Alvor estuary and the Bay of Lagos. The greens are bentgrass, the fairways Bermuda. The men play from the yellow tees at 5,700 metres and the women from the red at 4,700, which sounds short until the wind gets up off Meia Praia. (FPG Terms of Competition)

The format is three rounds of stroke play and a sudden-death play-off if needed. A Nations Cup runs alongside it, with teams of two or three counting their best two scores each day. With 11 Swedes in the field, that looks a reasonable bet.

Playing It Yourself

You need not be plus five to enjoy Palmares. Visitors can play all three loops, and the Palmares Beach House Hotel puts you on Meia Praia, minutes from the course. Lagos’s old town, with its grilled sardines and cataplana, is a short drive away.

Palmares Beach House Hotel on Meia Praia, Lagos

For a little competition of your own, the West Algarve Golf Trophy returns to Palmares, Espiche and Boavista from 25 to 27 November. Handicaps there are rather more forgiving.

Browse our Algarve golf courses and book Palmares on a weekend without 80 low handicappers ahead of you.