Second stay in almost a year, still very good.

I wrote a long review last year after I stayed at Henann Crystal Sands, so I am just going to note a couple of bullet points here due to staying a few days before Christmas.

Good:

• The hotel has done a great job of getting back up to speed and operating as well as it did before it was forced to closed during the pandemic.
• The staff continues to be extremely polite and very helpful.
• The hotel seems to be operating at about 70% capacity, so things aren’t super busy, and it allows you to get sun loungers and the like fairly easily.
• The Sky Pool bar is one of the best of any hotel I have stayed at and is a great place to spend the day.
• The hotel is in an ideal location in Station 2, Boracay.

Bad:

• The rooms all face each other, so there is zero privacy unless you close all blinds. The issue with this is twofold: 1) The wooden blinds covering the main door to the balcony are far too heavy to stay up (You must move them upwards to close them, which doesn’t help with gravity being a thing). 2) All the other blinds completely stop any light coming in and the room lights are not exactly bright. As such, the room ends up dreary and dark.
• They are charging 300 pesos per day to use the gym as a hotel guest. This is nothing short of a money grab and extremely poor form if you ask me.
• The breakfast buffet continues to leave a lot to be desired.

Despite the bad points, the hotel is priced very well, and the location + the Sky Pool more than makeup for any shortcomings. I would recommend staying here.

But do note that Boracay as a whole is still very much closed with only about 40% of the establishments open for business.