Paul Benjamin
August 12, 2024
I wonder how the lifeguard can hear the screams of drowning children when he's sitting next to a speaker blaring out the most aweful songs at pile-driver volume. This is the sixth or seventh time my wife and I have stayed here, but we always say it will be our last. It's super convenient for us: close to the airport, her family in las pinas and the leafy suburb of Alabang (and the chocolate sourdough and Firehouse pizza of the Crimson Hotel.
They seem to have now given up on being a real hotel. It's always puzzled us as to why the hotel always seems empty but there are always really noisy families on all sides of our room. This trip I checked out other floors and they were in darkness. The hotel is also clearly targeting families: the pool was packed with kids and adults who couldn't swim, making it a very unattractive proposition until they escaped the midday sun. i've nothing against families, but if you're trying to be an international hotel and charging close to HK rates per night, the last thing guests want is thousands of screaming kids at breakfast, ruining the ambience etc. It's kind of a race to the bottom now. The "gourmand" restaurant is NOT. the mignon restaurant on the top floor has NEVER been open. Now they've shut the sports bar -- where we used to go to play pool. The staff, god blees 'em, haven't been trained properly, the management are clearly hopeless and they have no sense of how to retain guests, You'd think after staying there half a dozen times, their CRM system would twig that it's us -- the couple that drops a few thousand pesos every night in your crappy bar! Here's a good indication: when asking the staff (on our last visit) for a san miguel beer, i wass told they didn't have any... er... there's a 7-11 over the road, get off your **** and buy one. In any event, we went upstairs to the at-the-time-open bar and guess what? they had loads of san miguel. It's a bit like Fawlty Towers... but not funny. It it wasn't down the road from her family, we'd stay in the Crimson or another nearby hotel. In fact, trying one out this weekend. Will let y'all know how that goes.