A more personal way to stay in Portugal

We combine the freedom of staying in a private home with the consistency, attention to detail and personal support guests expect from high-quality hospitality. The result is a stay that feels both elevated and effortless.

Who we are

Superior Rentals was created with a simple idea in mind: exceptional stays should feel personal, welcoming and beautifully put together. We believe that where you stay shapes how you experience a destination, which is why we focus on homes that combine comfort, character and a strong sense of place.

Rather than building a large and impersonal portfolio, we have chosen a more thoughtful path. We curate a small collection of distinctive properties and care for each one with the same attention we would expect as guests ourselves. This approach allows us to deliver a more consistent, more human and more refined hospitality experience.

We do not aim to offer more places. We aim to offer better stays.

What sets us apart

Key milestones

Where we host

Meet the team

Behind every Superior Rentals stay is a small team committed to thoughtful hospitality, responsive support and consistently high standards.

Discover a more personal way to stay in Portugal

Explore our collection in Madeira and Lisbon and book directly with Superior Rentals for a more seamless and thoughtful experience.

Who else writes the journal

Some of these guides are written by contributors who walk the routes and eat at the tables before writing about them.

Ana Freitas — Cities and day trips · degree in communication and tourism

Ana has spent several years working in travel and urban-experience content. She lives in the Lisbon region and knows the city mostly on foot and by public transport, and she spends much of her free time finding neighbourhoods, restaurants, viewpoints and small local businesses. For the journal she writes about Portuguese cities and the day trips you can make from them, Lisbon above all, along with Sintra and Cascais, and before publishing a guide she tries out the routes, the journey times and the transport options she recommends. She is particularly interested in how a neighbourhood changes through the day, and prefers to write about a city as a place where people live rather than a collection of monuments.

Catarina Gomes — Nature, gardens and seasons · degree in environmental sciences

Catarina works on projects that bring together communication, sustainability and nature. She was born in Albufeira and has ties to several parts of the country, and that is where her interest comes from: how much Portugal changes from one region to the next and from one month to the next, in its microclimates, in its vegetation, and in the way a landscape you visited in spring is a different place in October. For the journal she writes about nature, gardens, weather and travelling outside high season. She is the sort of person who checks the forecast before leaving the house, but she knows a forecast rarely settles it: she would rather check conditions at several points and adapt the day to what she finds. Her articles try to answer one very practical question, what is it actually like to be in that place at that time of year?

Maria Santos — Restaurants, markets and food traditions · degree in hotel management

Maria works in hospitality, where she developed a particular interest in Portuguese food and in what restaurants, markets and small producers actually offer a visitor. She is as fond of the traditional houses where the speciality has not changed in decades, an espetada on its laurel skewer, a plate of açorda, as she is of the newer kitchens reinterpreting regional ingredients. For the journal she writes about restaurants, markets, regional products and food traditions across the country. When she visits a restaurant to write about it she looks past the plate: the service, the prices, the room, and whether it is somewhere she would genuinely send a guest. That is also why her articles do not stop at the best-known names. For Maria a recommendation is only useful if it answers one question: would I go back with my own money?

Pedro Silva — Trails, viewpoints and walking routes · degree in geography

Pedro works in land management and geographic information analysis, and spends much of his free time walking in the mountains of Madeira, where he has been on the trails for years. He looks after the journal's coverage of walking routes, levadas, peaks, viewpoints and nature, and he aims to walk the trails he writes about himself, which is why his articles stay on the ground he knows well. His background in geography shapes how he reads a landscape: not only the view, but the relief, the microclimates, the vegetation, and the way all of it decides what a walk will be like. He does not consider himself a hardened mountaineer, and that may be exactly what makes his recommendations useful to most visitors: he gives as much weight to a route's real difficulty, to footwear, or to the chance of fog as to the photograph at the final viewpoint. For him a good trail is not the hardest one, it is the one you walk in the right conditions and can actually enjoy.