El Nido Garden Resort — Hotel in El Nido

Sadly our visit to El Nido Garden Resort didn’t live up to expectations.||The location is good, situated away from the town at the far end of the beach and there is a new Town Square development directly next door which has various food and leisure establishments, the excellent Ap Kala cafe / restobar being the pick of the bunch.||The hotel garden area directly adjacent to the beach is lovely looking and the pool is very welcoming. The other garden areas and buildings are not in the best shape and seem to have been neglected in recent years (abandoned resort cafe building, decrepit pool table and the long since used massage area in particular). Part of the garden area by the smoking stall is now used to stare construction garbage and old gates, etc. not especially attractive in a garden resort. ||Some front of house staff appear to be inexperienced and / or badly trained resulting in low levels of competency and general management. Housekeeping was sporadic and we needed to ask for our room to be cleaned on several occasions even though we had the requested ‘make up my room’ sign displayed.||A pre-arrival email request for full personal ID information was received and duly completed and returned to enable a speedy check-in only for the check in staff to say this information doesn’t reach them and they have to take all your personal information again to check you in. Bizarre.||The included breakfast does not cater for non-Filipino guests beyond offering some lukewarm bacon and scrambled egg and the option of some toast and bland pastries. Their food offering is very outdated so I opted to pay for breakfast somewhere outside of the hotel.||Part of our group stayed in the main hotel building. The rooms were a good size and were of a reasonably up to date decorative standard with a balcony offering sea views in their case.||We paid extra for a beachside room / cabana which is decorated in a traditional style circa 1990 and in hindsight this was a big mistake.||Firstly, there are 12 cabanas. 6 of which were undergoing total renovation during our stay which meant construction noise from 8am to 5pm daily, there was also additional trench digging between the poolside cabanas and the beach which further disrupted our view and prevented us from enjoying time on our own on our small terrace during the daytime as the construction worker was permanently just a few metres away. What bothers me most about this is that the hotel did not have the decency to advise us of these disruptions prior to arrival. I don’t know why they didn’t do this but I have my suspicions.||Secondly, there is a busy beach road right outside the hotel garden and pool area. This is in use 24/7 and the traffic (mostly motorbikes, tricycles and mopeds) is quite noisy and disruptive, especially at night time.||Which leads me to the third issue, the incredibly noisy nightclub right next door. As part of the new town square development on the neighbouring plot of land a ‘super nightclub’ has been built. This makes an incredible amount of noise from 10pm until 5.00-5.30am and prevented us from sleeping pretty much every night. ||I love dance music as much as anyone else but this level of disruption was just crazy and it leads me to advise others to avoid the El Nido Beach Resort if you value a good nights sleep. If the nightclub doesn’t drive you around the bend the barking dogs on the other neighbouring property will do your nut in. ||I hope the newly renovated cabanas have industrial levels of sound deadening as they are literally just meters away from the new nightclub, prospective users of these rooms should proceed with extreme caution in my view.||Overall the resort feels like a fading star. Once beautiful and contemporary but now rather rough and disheveled and in need of significant investment to remain appealing to the modern holidaymaker.||The same can be said for El Nido itself. It has changed significantly in recent years and not for the better. The dozens of people trying to sell you waterproof bags or tacky jewellery as you try and relax on the beach or at a bar. The infuriating harassment every few metres from people trying to convince you to enter their bar or restaurant is reminiscent of Benidorm in the 1990’s and never used to happen here. The low grade tourist tat shops everywhere all selling identical junk. The many, many massage parlours touting for business and of course the relentless stream of folk hawking the boat tours is simply staggering. All of this means you cannot have a peaceful experience anywhere in the town or on the beach which by the way is infested with dozens of roaming dogs that take great pride in crapping at will all over the beach to further impede your quiet enjoyment of what was, once upon a time, a long time ago, a desirable and authentic Filipino beach destination. ||This is no longer the case I am sorry to report.||I did raise my concerns with hotel management via their email request for booking.com feedback but they have declined to reply to my questions. I think that says a lot about...

Sadly our visit to El Nido Garden Resort didn’t live up to expectations.

The location is good, situated away from the town at the far end of the beach and there is a new Town Square development directly next door which has various food and leisure establishments, the excellent Ap Kala cafe / restobar being the pick of the bunch.

The hotel garden area directly adjacent to the beach is lovely looking and the pool is very welcoming. The other garden areas and buildings are not in the best shape and seem to have been neglected in recent years (abandoned resort cafe building, decrepit pool table and the long since used massage area in particular). Part of the garden area by the smoking stall is now used to stare construction garbage and old gates, etc. not especially attractive in a garden resort.

Some front of house staff appear to be inexperienced and / or badly trained resulting in low levels of competency and general management. Housekeeping was sporadic and we needed to ask for our room to be cleaned on several occasions even though we had the requested ‘make up my room’ sign displayed.

A pre-arrival email request for full personal ID information was received and duly completed and returned to enable a speedy check-in only for the check in staff to say this information doesn’t reach them and they have to take all your personal information again to check you in. Bizarre.

The included breakfast does not cater for non-Filipino guests beyond offering some lukewarm bacon and scrambled egg and the option of some toast and bland pastries. Their food offering is very outdated so I opted to pay for breakfast somewhere outside of the hotel.

Part of our group stayed in the main hotel building. The rooms were a good size and were of a reasonably up to date decorative standard with a balcony offering sea views in their case.

We paid extra for a beachside room / cabana which is decorated in a traditional style circa 1990 and in hindsight this was a big mistake.

Firstly, there are 12 cabanas. 6 of which were undergoing total renovation during our stay which meant construction noise from 8am to 5pm daily, there was also additional trench digging between the poolside cabanas and the beach which further disrupted our view and prevented us from enjoying time on our own on our small terrace during the daytime as the construction worker was permanently just a few metres away. What bothers me most about this is that the hotel did not have the decency to advise us of these disruptions prior to arrival. I don’t know why they didn’t do this but I have my suspicions.

Secondly, there is a busy beach road right outside the hotel garden and pool area. This is in use 24/7 and the traffic (mostly motorbikes, tricycles and mopeds) is quite noisy and disruptive, especially at night time.

Which leads me to the third issue, the incredibly noisy nightclub right next door. As part of the new town square development on the neighbouring plot of land a ‘super nightclub’ has been built. This makes an incredible amount of noise from 10pm until 5.00-5.30am and prevented us from sleeping pretty much every night.

I love dance music as much as anyone else but this level of disruption was just crazy and it leads me to advise others to avoid the El Nido Beach Resort if you value a good nights sleep. If the nightclub doesn’t drive you around the bend the barking dogs on the other neighbouring property will do your nut in.

I hope the newly renovated cabanas have industrial levels of sound deadening as they are literally just meters away from the new nightclub, prospective users of these rooms should proceed with extreme caution in my view.

Overall the resort feels like a fading star. Once beautiful and contemporary but now rather rough and disheveled and in need of significant investment to remain appealing to the modern holidaymaker.

I did raise my concerns with hotel management via their email request for booking.com feedback but they have declined to reply to my questions. I think that says a lot about...

El Nido Garden Resort Review

Where do I even begin…

Check in was alright. The staff are friendly. That’s about the only good thing about this resort. I booked through Agoda. We had 1 night in a different room since they had no availability for the premium room on Agoda. It was a “Standard triple room without view” this was the description. As we check in the room had an awful musky smell. We also had no internet the first night and no hot water at all. We went back to the front desk to see if there was any other rooms to move us to, even if we paid extra but they said no they were fully booked. After we came back up to our room we saw a ROACH in our room! Disgusting!!

We sucked it up because it was only 1 night. Kept our bags shut so no roaches or bugs got into them. The next day comes and we go into our other room. It is supposed to be “premium twin” (remember that it does not say no view. I booked this room thinking we would have a view of the ocean or city. I will post the view from our balcony. This room is the EXACT same as their standard room! I feel so taken advantage of. Why would you call it “Premium” if indeed it is not.

Again NO HOT WATER FOR OUR ENTIRE STAY! Also the handle for our sink in our “premium” room bathroom was broken. Mould ridden bathroom with other peoples hair in the shower and slimy floors. We also were not able to dine upstairs as there was a HUGE event happening that we weren’t made aware of prior to booking. The breakfast was quite disgusting with flies touching the dairy items, fruits, breads, etc as they didn’t cover them.

We were only able to go up to the rooftop bar twice in our entire stay as the last day the bartender decided to take a day off and they had no one else to make drinks (including non alcoholic drinks).

On top of all of this we tried going to the pool once and only once as we got told no pool towels were available and had to use our personal use towels in the room. They stated they could replace them but they couldn’t just give us one to then give to them back. Went to the pool (also were not made aware before booking) loud construction day AND NIGHT as they are constructing cabanas near the pool area. GREAT.

Don’t get me started about the fact this resort has unethical practices to marine life. They have what seems to be fresh water turtles in an absolutely APPALLING shallow algae filled HOT water area, obviously neglected as their were a couple dead ones. What kind of business does this?!?

I also noticed they were pumping sewage into the ocean. I will include videos and photos of all of these things I’m mentioning. Absolute disgusting smell when walking out of the resort to the beach area as they aren’t even hiding the fact they are pumping sewage into the beach. As per research this is illegal and unethical. The beach has an unhealthy high level of E. coli. Coliform due to businesses pumping sewage into the beach.

Do yourself a favor. Go to The Funny Lion not far away. I wish I knew about them before booking this place. Only found out about The Funny Lion as I went to the sea tree spa to get massages that is connected with The Funny Lion, They also have a free boat shuttle to a private beach. (WHICH WERE DIVINE AND I HIGHLY RECOMMEND) but guess what? The Thai garden spa that is owned by El Nido Garden Resort has fake reviews as I looked closer into them as they had to balance out their real reviews from plummeting their ratings. Only good thing about el nido garden resort is the fact we didn’t get sick from eating there.

I will NEVER come back and I will NEVER recommend this place to any friends or family. Not even my haters. You have...