Good for a single night and gambling.

I’m writing this review after staying in the Hyatt for one night over this weekend, however, I have stayed at this hotel 4 or 5 times now so consider this review an aggregate of all those stays.

I’ll start with the most annoying aspect of the Hyatt and that is check-in. Unlike almost every other hotel in Manila, check-in time is 3 pm, not the standard 2 pm, but you are going to be stood around waiting to check-in for ages anyway, so it may as well be 3:30 pm. For some reason, there is no indication for guests to ask questions at the concierge, so because of this, each check-in desk becomes “general-questions-money-changer-and-anything-else”, so it means the queues are long. Then comes the actual check-in process when you finally get to the front of the queue… I have no idea what they are typing into those computers when you check-in (and why it is different than every other hotel I have stayed at), but I would say that me writing this review is quicker than them going through all the selections and actually giving you your key card — it’s blood boilingly infuriating.

I think it is also worth pointing out that on my trip before this one, we ended up waiting until 5 pm for our rooms to be ready, which was just crazy. On the flip side, and to be fair to the hotel, during my stay yesterday I did initially book a non-refundable and no-modification room, but had a family emergency and couldn’t make it. The hotel allowed me to change the date, nonetheless, so that was good of them.

So once you have finally checked in, then it’s up to the rooms. I usually stay in Wing 1, which I think are all the 56sqm. rooms. This time, I was in Wing 2 (36sqm. rooms) and the rooms are a little smaller and they do not have a bathtub. I’d recommend staying in Wing 1 where you can, as the rooms are much nicer and the tub is a nice touch, along with the view being a little better and it is easier to navigate to the rest of the hotel.

I have never had any issues with the rooms. Both sizes are very spacious, and despite other reviewers saying the contrary, I do think they are nice and modern. Make sure you avoid corner rooms as these are designed poorly. And do not get a room on the same level (Level 1) as the swimming pool, else you are going to have people screaming and shouting going past your room all day.

The swimming pool isn’t the best but certainly isn’t the worst. It’s kind of small and is tucked away to the side of a much larger pool, which is for guests of the Nobu Hotel. Now, my father would say to me that you should have worked harder at school so you can stay at the more expensive hotel and have a nice pool, but I didn’t — so I was stuck with the smaller Hyatt pool.

The pools also share a common pool bar, which serves the usual drinks and food you would expect beside a pool and is open until 10 pm. The Hyatt pool doesn’t get much sun due to it being surrounded on three sides by the actual building, and there is a hell of a wind trap late in the afternoon which can get quite breezy. If you are staying in Wing 1 as I told you to, then getting down to the pool is easy enough. But if you are in Wing 2, then it is a bit of a Labyrinth with you actually having to pass through an unremarkable fire-door at the end of a hallway that exits directly into the Nobu hotel. Then you have to walk by the Nobu Spa area out into the nice Nobu pool and then through a gate into the Hyatt pool… bring your map!

City of Dreams, which is the mall and casino that connects all the hotels, including the Hyatt, is nice enough. In fact, the Hyatt hotel lobby doubles up as one of the casino’s entrances. If you are a gambler (I am), then this is the best casino in Manila (perhaps bar Okada but I am yet to visit that new one) as it is spacious, has tons of table games, free drinks, excellent entertainment in the middle, a electronic virtual horse racing machine (second floor), and houses the Pokerstars poker tournament section on the second floor. The mall itself is full of restaurants and shops of different varieties and weirdly allows people to smoke inside the mall itself due to the casino kind of bleeding into it.

Except for the casino and the 8 or so restaurants in the mall, there isn’t a great deal else to do. Kids can go to the Dreamworks studio, but not having children myself, I cannot comment on it. As a childless couple, I think you would be hard-pressed to enjoy much more than two nights here. The only restaurant in the actual Hyatt hotel is the buffet, and it’s not the most expansive in terms of variety and selection, but the food is decent enough quality. You can always jump in a taxi for about 2km and travel to the Mall of Asia if you want to wander around for a few hours in a massive mall or visit the pier, but don’t expect to be able to walk anywhere around the hotel grounds as it is all construction for the mini Las Vegas they are building.

If you are looking for a hotel to stay at for an evening whilst waiting to catch a flight, then the Hyatt is about 10 minutes from any of the 3 Manila terminals. The new expressway that they have built in the area really has done wonders for negating traffic around the airport, as long as you ensure the taxi driver or Uber takes the NAIA Expressway from the Hyatt hotel and pays the small 20 peso toll.

All in all, I think the rooms are reasonable for the price, and the Hyatt is a perfect hotel for one night losing money in the casino whilst you wait for the sun to come up and catch a ride to your early morning flight. But it doesn’t really offer much more outside of that, and I am not even sure it tries to.

Great location, amazing sized rooms and bathroom.

Having not stayed in an Ovolo hotel before, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but they certainly go for the funky style.

First off, having stayed in Hong Kong, in general, a few times before I picked this “hotel” based purely on location — I have put Hotel in quotation marks because it really did feel much more like a serviced apartment than a hotel (which isn’t a bad thing). The hotel building is narrow with 2 rooms per floor, and except for check-in and check out, you could easily go an entire week without seeing another person when coming and going to and from your room to the outside world.

The rooms are amazing for Hong Kong, nicely laid out and very spacious. The bathroom and shower are again very large for Hong Kong and immaculately kept. My only issue with the bathroom is that the shower could have done with being a bit more powerful for my tastes, but still entirely usable.

When you do see the staff, they are nice and friendly, speak excellent English, and are happy to accommodate you in any way. The free snacks and drinks are a nice touch, but the area is more like that of reception than any sort of bar, so it wasn’t really somewhere I would like to sit for an hour to relax. As others have noted, the room is replenished with a loot bag (snacks, candy, etc.) but we did need to prompt our house cleaner on one occasion — she must have thought we were a little greedy 🙂 Back to the reception area, it also has a couple of washers and driers, so you can do a quick bit of laundry if you so desire without charge.

As I said, the location is amazing — right on the top of Lan Kwai Fong, which is the main drinking area. There are tons of bars and restaurants (including the best Indian restaurant on the island) located a stone’s throw away from the hotel — I mean like 2 minutes max of walking. Be aware, though, that you are going to have to climb a lot of stairs if the escalators are out like they were for the duration of our stay.

Next door is a decent enough USA-style diner where you can grab some quick food before heading out. The other side is a salad bar style cafe for those who are more health-conscious.

The place isn’t grand. And in my opinion, Ovolo marketing tries a little too hard to really push that they are hip and happening. But the rooms, service, and location are top notch and I would recommend this place for sure. It is a little pricey if you are used to paying for grand hotel entrances and masses of concierge welcoming you as you walk through the door, but more than reasonable for a very nice room in the heart of Hong Kong.

Great layout, Villa’s are nice, staff quick to allow rain to close everything.

I’m not long back from Crimson Resort, so this is fairly fresh in mind. We stayed in the Pool Villa’s, which are a bit more expensive than the standard rooms, but all situated in the same sort of area. I will say that I have stayed in numerous villas across a bunch of different Philippines resorts, and these were by far the best.

The layout and size of the villa are absolutely perfect, along with the walls being high enough that they remain private whilst still being easy to access. The plunge pool area is a little sparse with only a “naked” double reclining bed that you see along the pools, but the area does get sunlight nearly all day, so it is fine to relax in the privacy of your “home”. The rain shower in the bathroom could do with being more powerful, but it does have a dedicated bathtub to soak in.

I absolutely loved the layout of the actual resort, especially how the dedicated beach bar had an “infinity” view. The beauty of the layout also meant that for childless couples like ourselves, we could head away from the main area and relax without the worry of being bothered by the playful noise that children make.

With all that being said, I was pretty disappointed that the staff is far too quick to close this area entirely at the slightest drop of rain. For instance, it rained a little around 3 pm one day, and it was obviously forecast to rain further. Instead of just risking it and closing the area when it did rain, they just shut the whole thing down for the afternoon/night and that was that. Also, all bar areas close strictly at 12 midnight (2 am on Friday and Saturday), which made me frustrated. Why the distinction between a weekend and a weekday when you are a resort and people are there over the holiday period?

The other bar, which is inside the resort, is named the sports bar. It had a couple of decent-ish pool/billiard tables, but the pool cues could have done with some love. It also had an unusable darts board. Unusable, because the thing has been hammered for 3 years without being replaced and none of the questionable darts would even stick into it. I asked the bartender about this and he said they have requested it to be replaced, but it never has… can management really not afford a few dollars to replace a darts board?

You can also forget about watching any Western live sports (except basketball) in the sports bar as all they have are local cable channels. Again, with the instances closing exactly at 12 midnight, you wouldn’t be able to catch much sport live anyway. Despite the last couple of lines sounding negative, the layout of the sports bar was very nice but should be called a games room as opposed to a sports bar.

The internet was way below what I would expect for a resort of this size. My iPhone 7 would often drop from Wifi to it’s own LTE due to the wifi signal not being strong enough. And when you were connected to Wi-Fi, it was slow, maxing out at around 120kbps when it wasn’t dropping out. Fine for perhaps checking the weather or firing a few quick emails, but not so good if you wanted to get some heavy work done. On that note, Globe’s cell phone reception is almost nonexistent in the villa we stayed in and barely got above 2 bars (3 at a push). They could probably do with a couple of cell towers to cover the resort.

The beach is nice enough, with a nice private area for people to sit down and swim in. Visitors of other Lapu-Lapu resorts will note that the area is rocky, so don’t expect talcum powder sand. The drop into the sea is pretty shallow too and the local fish come close enough that you can get a decent enough experience when snorkelling.

The pool is nice, 3 tiered, but is woefully lacking the number of chairs/beds needed for a resort of this size. You need to be up early to make base by the pool, and due to the way the resort is designed, you are going to constantly get foot traffic walking by your head no matter where you are situated. Families will often venture from the dedicated kids’ pool, which can be frustrating when you are trying to relax, but such is life.

The food is pretty good — not amazing, certainly not poor. I like the Indian fusion that is apparent in the menu, but it does lack the wide choice that you would perhaps find at other places. Unfortunately, I had a nasty bout of food poisoning from a room service burger, and to be fair to the resort they were on the ball on correcting the issue. The head chef came to me personally and was obviously very upset that this sort of thing happened and the director of food arranged for us to have a free spa treatment in a packed spa as compensation for the issue. I have stayed at places in the past where just having an issue like this would have made my blood boil, but it was handled with so much care that I found I could let it slide.

The staff is very friendly, as you would expect from Filipino workers, but they shone here compared to other places with being able to answer all questions and checking on ways to have custom meals or drinks, as opposed to just saying “not possible”.

Travel time from the airport is about 25 minutes, so you can fly from Manila to Cebu and get to the resort in the morning and have the afternoon to yourself.

I would recommend this resort to my friends. It’s fine for couples, and families are well taken care of with its kid-friendly focus.