Mandarin Plaza Hotel

This is a awesome Hotel with good breakfast. People is very friendly and food is good , is very close to ayala center with manny stores. The lobby will arrange any pick ups that u need , we where happy

I've been returning to this hotel for the past 6 years and have observed the inevitable regression of what once was a 4 Star hotel (8 different visits for a total of about 20 nights). The price and location will definitely keep bringing customers back like myself, but the hotel management over the past two to three years has definitely gone down. Like most 4-star hotels, you get a bathrobe, slippers and toiletries. Now beyond a few bath towels all are gone; even the ice bucket has been removed. If you want ice, you'll need to call room service (around $0.70 USD but more like $2 if you include the tip). Wifi is hit-or-miss, it just depends on which room you're in. I called the front desk to complain and they told me their tech department would improve the signal to my room (an obvious lie), which of course changed nothing. I ended-up working out of the lobby. [At the time of this post] Don't expect to use the gym beside the pool and if you're a female expect male staff and hotel guests walking through your changing room since that's the only way to get to the broken down gym; half the equipment is out-of-order the other half has been literally duck taped together. The hotel directly across the street (Quest) has many problems of its own, but for roughly the same price, at least the quality never changes. I've added one photo that sums-up the regression of this hotel. What use to be a laminated in-room menu, now looks like this:

The pool was mostly under construction while I was there in May 2019, but the sauna was nice and the area is right by a shopping mall which is convenient.

It is a fine business hotel. Nothing special. Nothing that was annoying. Everything worked and was clean. Breakfast was so-so. The hotel does have some weird rules. For instance, the food deliveryman was not allowed to come up to my room. I can understand some security but this prohibition is unnecessary. They could call my room. They could keep the deliveryman's ID. Lots of options short of a flat, lazy prohibition.

Being my first trip to the Philippines, I was wary of where I ended up staying. The Mandarin Plaza, however, a very good choice. It is located within 10-mins of the Ayala mall - close to plenty of food outlets and shopping. It is also about 20 mins by taxi or Grab Car from the Santo Nino Basilica as well as the port (if heading out by sea to Bohol etc). There's also a jeepney station between the Ayala Mall and the hotel. The hotel was clean, and my room was too, with housekeeping doing a good job daily. Bottled water and coffee making facilities were provided in the room. There was no iron/ironing board in my room but it was promptly provided on request. Breakfast was a decent spread (without many spicy options as I'm used to elsewhere in SEA); the coffee, pancakes and scrambled eggs being all I really went for. The staff were courteous and friendly always. Check-in can take a bit long, however, I should point out that in my case this was because two large tour groups preceded me. Also, traffic dependent it is a minimum of an hour (no traffic as I experienced on a Friday at 730am) to the airport on Mactan - traffic, I'm told, can be much, MUCH worse so ask at reception before timing your checkout (The WiFi was excellent). Pretty decent place to stay and I can say some of the negative reviews are unwarranted. The area is good and I felt safe there. The city in general was safer than expected but off course, always be cautious as you would anywhere.