I stayed in Cebu at a $20-per-night hotel the night before. I decided I would upgrade to a nicer, classier place, so I stayed at this place which was almost triple the cost of the other place I stayed in. Man, was I disappointed.
I walked into the lobby, and it was air conditioned, so that was a nice first impression. The staff were professional and welcoming. Check in was easy enough. I needed to leave a 1000 peso deposit.
Then I went to my room. The first thing I noticed is that there is about a one inch (or more) gap at the bottom of the door to the room, which opens to the outside. As you can imagine, this create two huge problems. 1. The air conditioning goes out of the room. 2. Any insect (cockroaches, mosquitos) can come into the room whenever they would like to. To try to solve these two problems, I used one of my bathtowels whenever I was in the room and laid it across the floor to cover the gap as well as I could.
The beds were nice, and comfortable. Overall, a quiet enough place to sleep too.
The TV did not work. The elevator to the lobby occasionally did not work. The two deal breakers for me though, were that the site I booked said the hotel has laundry services and in room wifi. The wifi... DID NOT WORK. ...and there was no laundry service. I went to the front desk, and changed my three day booking to a one day booking. I figured at the very least, I would go back to the $20 per night hotel and at least have good wifi when I needed it to book things.
I killed the biggest cockroach I have ever seen in a hotel. That was expected since the door is basically an insect-welcoming one inch gap over the floor. It crawled in under the door from outside (through the towel I had used to try to keep them out) and headed straight for the bathroom, as I expected. (Interestingly, these cockroaches do not employ the 'dodging skills' of cockroaches I experienced in China, which you had to swing at like 20 times before you got it. These Cebu cockroaches seem to not even be aware that you are coming for them, which makes it easier!) While going to the lobby to use the wifi there since there was no room wifi, I saw a wide variety of sizes of cockroaches. Again, stomping my feet, and waving things at them did not deter them from coming closer to my feet than I wanted them to be.
I would have given this place a 2 rating, but this was a PRICEY HOTEL for Cebu standards!!! They should not be charging more than $30 a room to stay in such a place! There are many hotels within a five minute walk which are much cheaper, where you would have the same problems, but with good wifi and better insulated doors.
This is not like America. You are very unlikely to find a 'bug free' room for under $100 USD per night, so it is not the same kind of indictment as it would be in the USA. But still, I was insulted that I had paid more money to come to this place which was worse than the much cheaper place I had stayed in the night before... There is no way to express the disappointment except by giving the first 1 rating I have ever given to a hotel.
Even if the room wifi had worked, I would have left and gone back to the previous hotel, which was very similar, but less than half the price.
I will say that this hotel is in a good location (like all of the cheaper ones beside it are) and you can easily walk to a variety of restaurants, coffee, and bars. They say they usually have wifi but it had not worked for a few days.
I can't say I would ever stay there again... I hope they improve on these things in the future after getting this kind of review, which I know nobody wants to get.
