Tired hotel, but friendly staff, and good location.

The Le Meridien is located in a great area to allow you to walk around the streets of Chiang Mai and find local bars and eateries. The hotel itself could do with a bit of a refresh with tired décor and rooms. But a pleasant stay nonetheless with no complaints.

Getting from the airport to the hotel is very easy. There is both the option of booking a Grab or using a very cheap hotel taxi service. Arriving around 9 pm saw us get from the airport to the hotel in about 10 minutes.

Check-in was a little frustrating. There was a little bit of a queue and not so many staff there to sort it out, nothing too bad though. I did have an issue with my booking as we were there for a conference. I had booked the room many months in advance but was told I could only have a twin bed instead of a king, whilst the friend checking in with me had booked just a week or two before and was given a king. Almost as if they had randomly assigned the rooms a few days before the conference. Pointing out that my booking had been made almost as soon as they were able to be taken sorted this out though, so all was good.

The rooms are a fairly decent size with a nice view across Chiang Mai. Like the hotel lobby, the rooms are also a little tired, the bedside cabinets are a little chipped, there are no adequate bedside outlets, etc. to plug devices in, but they were clean. The bathroom was also a nice size with a decent shower.

The conference that was hosted by the hotel was very well executed. The food and break snacks were of great quality, so the staff must be commended there.

Check-out was again a little slow, but there were a lot of people heading out. A Grab car was required to head to the airport and got me there in about 30 minutes with lunchtime traffic.

All in all, a fine hotel, especially for the area. It could just do with a bit of modernisation.

Still doing everything well despite a lot of renovation.

I pretty much always stay in this hotel when I am in Hong Kong due to the location and the decent-sized rooms. At the moment, there is a lot of renovation going on at the ground floor entrance of the hotel with an expansion. I will be looking forward to seeing this when it is complete, and it doesn’t change the very good rating that this hotel consistently deserves.

The only thing I might say that I haven’t mentioned in previous reviews is that I am starting to find the mattresses a little hard with older age. It would be nice to have some rooms with a softer option.

Beautiful grounds, decent price, but tired rooms and shambolic front desk admin.

The Sofitel probably has the best grounds of any hotel in Manila. They are very well kept along the bay with a large swimming pool to complement. However, the rooms are the exact opposite with a tired design that matches the shoddy hotel exterior. The front desk is poorly trained with managers not understanding the offers presented on their website or clear communication on how charges are applied and handled.

If you are coming to the Sofitel from the airport, you can expect a fairly speedy trip thanks to the Airport expressway. You can make the journey in about 10 minutes with no traffic and perhaps 30 or so minutes with heavy traffic.

As mentioned in the opening paragraph, the hotel grounds are likely the best of any hotel in Manila. Not only are they of large size, but they are well kept and hug the shoreline of the bay so that you are looking out onto the water almost anywhere you sit and relax. Unfortunately, the hotel exterior itself is the exact opposite and looks in dire need of a repaint. The interior of the hotel reception is nice enough with the grand entrance overlooking the Spirals buffet, which is one of (if not) the largest buffet selection in Manila.

Check-in was a bit of a pain, I had pre-booked and pre-paid for two rooms, one of which included a bed for a child. Not usually traveling with children, I made sure to triple check the website when the booking was made to ensure that a two single bedroom would be adequate, with the site quite clearly stating that a roll-out bed would be provided free of charge. Upon check-in, I was told that there would be an additional charge for this bed, of which I then asked to speak with a manager.

After a 5 minute, or so, wait, the manager came and quite frankly spoke to me like I was an idiot. I pointed out that the website quite clearly states that the room provides a child bed for free and in fact even goes far as to say that a room of two single beds will fit two adults and two children, to which she stated that it does if an adult and a child each share a single bed.

It is bizarre to me that anyone would think that it would be acceptable to promote a room like that without any sort of outline that the bed-sharing is what is expected. She then decided to “help us out” by honouring the text on the website after I had managed to pull up the T&C’s on my phone showing her in black and white what it said, with her making sure to remind us again “That it is wrong, and I’ll speak with the managers to get it changed”. It wouldn’t even have been a big issue if she hadn’t acted as I’d just asked for a free room and was causing her personal issues and expense.

Anyway, we got checked into the two rooms, but this wouldn’t be the only time we’d need to deal with communication issues regarding the front desk.

The rooms themselves were pretty much fine, clean enough with a decent size bed. The only thing that I would say is that they are also tired, the décor is tired, the sockets/outlets are a little wonky, there is no socket/outlet on one side of the bed, the shower is powerless. It all just feels that it is about 10 years old and this is AFTER the renovation that they had a few years back. I suppose you can’t ask for too much though, because the price is fairly reasonable and nothing in the room warranted complaining about.

The hotel effectively has two restaurants with a further bar/restaurant in the pool area. This pool bar was being renovated, so we weren’t able to try it on this visit. But a couple of years back, we ate there, it was fine, exactly what you’d expect from a hotel pool bar.

The Spirals buffet is huge, a little expensive too at 3,500 PHP per head but a great selection from around the world and worth trying.

My favourite bar in the hotel is Snaps, which is a pretty classic American style sports bar. The décor here is really nice, comfy chairs, lots of wood, nice carpets, etc. The food is decent too, nothing special outside of burgers and such that you’d expect in a sports bar — but decent nonetheless. The sports bar also opens up into the Pagcor slot machine casino, which never really gets very busy, but is good for a few pesos if you are bored.

I repeated the word sports bar a couple of times above because you would very well expect a sports bar to show the most-watched league from the most-watched sport in the world. I am of course talking about Football/Soccer, which in the Philippines is shown on the Bein Sports channel. This sports bar does NOT show the most-watched league in the world because their “cable provider does not offer the channel”. That would be somewhat acceptable, but it has been this way for about THREE YEARS! How on earth has a sports bar in a multi-million-peso hotel not managed to work out how to get a channel that shows soccer? I totally get that Basketball is the sport in the Philippines, but you really would expect the managers to sort out showing international sports in an international hotel. Even whilst I was there, I saw no less than three people ask about it.

Check-out itself was quick — a little too quick. I checked out and was told that my credit card was not needed as the bill had been settled. I assumed that this meant our charges came under the 15,000 PHP deposit or so that I had been asked to give, and they’d just refund the difference. I should have asked for a receipt to double-check, but I did not, only to receive an email later on to Inform me they were taking a 32,000 PHP charge for the unpaid bill. That is fine, we ate a little more than I thought. But something didn’t add up and this was the start of my aggravation with the admin of the front desk. I’ve never had anything like this before and I had no reply from the email within 24 hours after asking about the charges which then meant I needed to make a phone call… a 50-minute call!

I’ll save you the details, but it turns out that they only emailed me ONE of the receipts from the rooms, so when I kept repeatedly and slowly asking for them to explain an additional charge, they couldn’t make the maths add up. Why on earth would you just send one receipt and basically say “We are charging you almost double what is shown here” with no explanation as to why that is the case? It just felt to me that no one on the front desk has any real experience in handling these procedures properly, as mentioned I have never had anything like this at all in any other hotel I have ever stayed at and that all it would have taken to sort it out would be 2 minutes to double-check the information was included.

In closing, the Sofitel is a decent enough hotel if you don’t really expect too much — and it is priced accordingly for that. There are so many things that are nearly right but not quite there that it just gets a little frustrating. I’d probably go back with kids (but be wary of the hidden fee they try to apply despite the website saying otherwise) due to the large swimming area, but as a couple/ business/ friends visiting the Pasay area of Manila, it is probably better to spend time at any of the newer hotel-casinos closer to the airport.

Third stay, still great, but the slamming doors are killing me.

I’ve positively reviewed this hotel twice before with very good reason and there isn’t much I can say outside of what everyone else repeats. Mainly: great location, brilliant staff, good sized rooms, and a decent price.

But… the noise from the doors. If you aren’t going out of the hotel before 10 am, then you are going to hear the doors slamming from your next-door neighbour and then again when housekeeping comes along.

It is literally the only complaint of an otherwise excellent hotel and one that should be quite easily rectified.

An oasis amongst the urban chaos.

The Edsa Shangri-La is not the newest hotel in Manila and its location isn’t prime, but it offers the perfect place for a staycation with a literal oasis of the swimming pool and trees amongst the hustle and bustle of Ortigas. I have stayed in this hotel more times than I count and have never had a bad experience, although only just got around to reviewing it now.

If you are flying into Manila and are staying at the Edsa Shangri-La, then chances are you either know someone in the area or you are coming on business. The hotel is about a 30-minute drive from NAIA airport with no traffic and closer to a 1-hour 30-minute drive with traffic on a rainy Friday night. The hotel is flanked by two malls: the Shangri-La mall that the hotel connects to via walkway, and the SM MegaMall, a short 3-minute walk from the hotel lobby. Outside of the two malls, there really isn’t a lot in the area, with Ortigas being the old business district with most modern businesses and hotels being in the Makati and Manila bay area.

Hotel check-in is usually very swift, I don’t seem to recall a time when I have had to wait more than a minute or two to have my details taken. Of course, the check-in staff processes everything very quickly and you will have your room key before you know it.

The hotel reception is very grand, nice and open with large chandeliers hanging from the ceiling with the 24-hour hotel bar stretching across the back of the reception building. There are two wings to the hotel, but after being refurbished a year or two ago, there isn’t too much difference between the rooms.

The rooms themselves are an ok size. Far from the largest that the most recently built Manila hotels are now offering, but certainly not small enough to complain about. Despite the hotel being fairly old, the rooms have had a refresh and for the most part, are in good condition and don’t look overly tired.

The absolute gem at this hotel for me, and why it is perfect for a staycation, is the pool area — which, in my opinion, is the best hotel pool in Manila besides the sprawling Sofitel at the bay. The pool is nice and large with an entirely separate kids pool off to the far side so that those with families don’t bother those without. The pool bar has ample seating and some TVs, which makes it perfect to just chill out and have a beer. But be warned that they close infuriatingly early at around 10 pm on a weekday and 11 pm on a weekend. The staff will, thankfully, allow you to order some drinks and sit out after the bar has closed should you wish to chill to the early hours of the morning. The pool bar menu is as you would expect and also offering a selection of pizzas that are cooked in the oven right there in front of you in the pizza oven. What also makes this pool area feel like a real oasis is the plant life and trees, which are so very welcomed in this concrete grey area of town — but that also comes with a lot of mosquitos! Be very sure you bring mosquito repellent with you if you plan to sit outside after dark.

The hotel houses four restaurants excluding the pool bar. Chinese, Japanese, Italian, and the standard hotel buffet restaurant are all present — if memory serves me correctly. As you would well expect from a Shangri-La, the service is impeccable and the quality of food, no matter your choice of cuisine, is high.

Check-out is usually fairly straightforward, but be sure to pre-book a hotel car if you are traveling back to the airport as the local taxis don’t come into the hotel lobby too often, and even if they do you’d probably not want to take one all that distance.

If they just opened the bar area a little later each evening, then I don’t think I would ever leave.