Express Inn Mabolo — Hotel in Cebu City

This hotel looks terrible but blessed with a fantastic location of being within a few minutes walk from SM City, a huge mall with countless transport options accessing the airport and virtually all of metro Cebu and outlying areas. The mall itself provides a countless dining selection.||||The air conditioner in my room worked great and the water got sufficiently hot. Being on the seventh floor, it was also quiet. In general, the wifi worked well except it'd go down for 30 minutes every morning.||||My biggest grip involves their lack of security. You're instructed to leave the key at the front desk when you exit the hotel to start your day. But the scary thing is, when you return to retrieve the key, they don't ask for ID. They just hand it to you when you reference your room number. Anyone can claim they're living in your room and get the key. ||||This is an idiotic lapse of security and easily avoidable. They should insist on ID or give some token to trade for the key to prove you live in the room. ||||I have feeling they want to keep the key because it's attached to a device that activates electricity in the room. They don't want you to keep that device plugged and have electricity running while you're out.||||Fortunately, I'm an extremely light traveler and leave nothing of value in my room. But if you have valuables, there will be a major concern. ||||The bottom line here is, it's cheap and the location is great. Don't expect much else...

very basic small and dark rooms poor cr shower fixed and and be moved. just from the top no safe no phone no frigerator no wadrobe no anything just a poor small table, 2 poor plastic chairs, a bed and a small tv. thats all. not working wifi! connection too bad. more just a desk than a lobby. no chance to get other guests known. safe at the desk only. very not satisfying. u have to store ur valueables and money always when u come in the hotel. mostly u have to wait for somebody is free. u cant see when and how he put ur things in the safe as he is in another room. u have to trust. always u go out u have to wait to get ur things out of the safe. u also cant see the stuff will take it. u also have to trust. there are mostly different stuff so if something is wrong you never will know and surely can say which one of both did it. there are small windows but the next house is just 2 meter in front. so u steer just on a wall and no light can come in ur room. no pool located directly to the busy 4 row main road very bad...

Everytime my family and I go to Cebu, we always stay here and loved it. However a few years past we noticed the stark decline of service from unfriendly staff to aged room facilities. Most recently, we were almost thrown out from the hotel despite having a 2 day reservation. The hotel staff claimed that since we only paid for the first day, then that is the only valid reservation. This is not true however since the other receptionist on our first day of staying there, told us that we can pay upon check out.

Had i not insisted on talking to the manager and/or their supervisor (both of whom did not even bother to talk to me) and left me waiting in the lobby for good 30 minutes - their staff would not have sorted our 2nd day reservations.

We our deeply frustrated with this incident and had it not been for our 1-year old, we would have gone to a different hotel on the second day.

Finally, this is an eye opener. Perhaps, after several years of being loyal to this hotel, its high time to look for another - perhaps a...