We stayed in Cool Stay Inn for five nights, paid €119, stayed in room 32. We paused a 500Php deposit on the room which was returned on checkout.
Once you arrive on the island at ferry terminal, about a 15/20min trike to the hotel (shouldn't cost more than 120Php). The hotel is about a 5min walk from Station 1 White beach, about another few mins walk to D'Mall (shopping/food&drink, etc).
Note that you can't check in until after 2PM. On check in we had a brief wait and were shown to our room (room 32 on second floor). Shared kitchen next door with four has stoves, sink and some plastic cutlery.
On check in, the room itself was clean, towels provided are decent quality, bed linen is a little thin but does the job. Balcony is small and wasn't fit for use other than for storing our runners as the AC unit was leaking on arrival (a cut off water bottle was catching the leaking fluid).
Bathroom is long but narrow. Shower pressure and temperature was decent.
The room has a number of wall sockets, TV provided worked fine, transmission cable had tenancy to come loose sometimes.
We availed off an offer to buy 5 gallons of water for 100Php which is good value.
The Wi-Fi signal in our room wasn't great, outside the room it's a little stronger but fairly slow. My advice would be to pick up a local simcard, Boracay Island has 4G coverage.
However, there are a number of things which we experienced during our stay which would prevent us from returning to CSI ever again.
As noted in other trip advisor reviews about CSI, there is allegedly "daily room cleaning service". However, not once during our five night stay was our room cleaned. On day three I had to ask for fresh towels, and the day after for fresh bed linen. You would think that asking for fresh towels and bed linens on separate occasions would encourage the staff to make note to actually clean the room at least once but sadly this was not the case. The owner has replied to some other reviews which mentioned the same lack of housekeeping calling guests liars - instead of calling guests liar for giving their feedback, perhaps instead they should focus on improving their maid service. I can assure you this was not a lie. The picture I have attached was a bin in our room which was overflowing with five days worth of garbage.
As previously noted above, the AC unit was leaking upon check in, with a sawn off water bottle placed out on the balcony to catch water runoff from the leaking unit.
On the third day of our stay, a second leak started and upon reporting this to reception, their idea of a "fix" was to just give the outside of the AC unit a quick wipe - and then place another sawn off water bottle out on the balcony to catch the additional leak. We had to constantly keep pouring out this fluid throughout the day, which we honestly wouldn't have minded so much if it weren't for the fact that the AC itself isn't the best and struggles to keep the room cool (and is quiet loud). This has been mentioned in a few other reviews also to which management have responded that the unit is only two years old and only requires maintenance. However we asked for said maintenance and it never happened. The attached picture shows the two water bottles and random piles of wiring which were left on the balcony.
The staff themselves aren't the friendliest either, most times when we came to and from the hotel, most staff wouldn't bother to lift their head in greeting (with the exception of the guy on the late shift who always gave us a genuine greeting). One girl in particular really needed to check her attitude when dealing with paying customers.
During our stay, there was also construction works going on the floor above us. Given we booked this hotel very far in advance there was no notification about ongoing construction works however we weren't advice this would be happening on check in, at the very least we should have been given the heads up.
Similarly, on check-in we weren't provided any information whatsoever about the surrounding area, things to deal, good restaurants, etc. Once, when I enquired about where I could get my laundry done, all I got was a hand gesture and a "down the road".
Maybe it's a case that the staff morale is low given the impending closure of Boracay however this honestly shouldn't be an excuse either we payed money to stay here based upon the great reviews however sadly for us by the end of our five nights we feel like the staff made no attempt anymore to engage with us and honestly it became quite uncomfortable to be in the premises. It really did but a damper on our boracay experience and we know this is not representitive of the great Filipino hospitality we know.
