Algarve resort in €2 million investment

Details – Hotels and Resorts, the new operator of the Vale da Lapa resort formerly owned by Oitante, says it will inject a €2 million investment package into the project in order to make the asset financially viable.

Vale da Lapa is a tourist village in the Algarve close to Carvoeiro, Lagoa which, says the operator, has gained appeal because of Covid-19 as it has only 80 detached houses in a generous low-density development.
The resort is sub-divided into 71 duplex two-bedroom houses and 12 V3 town houses with private pool.
It had been announced in January this year that the development was earmarked for closure with the loss of 40 jobs and millions of euros.
Vale da Lapa was owned by Oitante, a company set up to manage assets held by the former bank Banif which was wound up in 2015.
Oitante was responsible for the management of the rights and obligations that made up the bank’s assets, including this Algarve development.
Vale da Lapa was designed to be a 5-star resort and has 85 town houses, a spa, restaurant, swimming pool and mini-market spread out over a 6 hectare site, valued at €26.5 million. The resort was built in 2010 but with the Great Recession went into administration.
It was just one of several Portuguese resorts which were over-leveraged in terms of borrowing that ended up being a casualty of Portugal’s sovereign debt crisis from 2011 onwards, a crisis which saw the keys of many resorts handed back to the banks over loan defaults.
Oitante, as the sole owner and shareholder in the company WIL S.A., holding 98.26%, chose a new operator. The deal was represented by Altamira and CBRE and a law firm contracted to that effect.
Last year Oitante applied for the “unilateral and immediate” handover of Vale da Lapa on 31 December 2019 to itself and to WIL S.A. while the resort was in operation with the intention of closing its operations down.
At the same time, Oitante did not provide any information about the identity of the new operator, or the adjudication procedures involved in the choice of that operator.
That new operator is Details – Hotels & Resorts.
According to Details – Hotels & Resorts, Vale da Lapa is currently in a ‘Stop Sales’ situation ordered by the previous managers.
Details has announced that it will renovate and refurbish the product which will repositioned in terms of the market as a benchmark 5-star resort. It will be reopened as soon as market conditions allow.
The resort, which is close to Algar Seco and near blue flag beaches like Carvoeiro, Marinha and Benagil, is also close to Ferragudo.