Hotel St. Ellis — Hotel in Legazpi

I stayed here for an overnight trip to Legazpi on January 2025. By this point, I've been to a few hotels in the city at the same price level as well as a couple in other cities in the Philippines (outside NCR). All of these within the second half of 2024 and now 2025.

To me, this is the best, and most complete option out of all I've stayed at so far.

My personal priorities when it comes to hotels are good rooms, and a solid breakfast option.

The room is great and I've provided a lot of photos for you to check out yourself. Room is spacious, well-lit, and well-stocked with amenities.

Often with budget hotels and in the pursuit of eco-friendliness, a lot of the minor "free" amenities you may be used to in hotels back in the day are no longer provided. Honestly, if it brings the cost down I'm all for it.

But as someone who is getting up in age and who doesn't really have as much time to prepare for overnight trips as I would typically for a week long vacation, I've begun to appreciate the small things like having free slippers with the room.

Room is pretty clean, cold, newly renovated, and has a Smart Tv (another thing I have appreciated as someone who stays in during these trips especially when I'm visiting every month or every week).

I have to commend as well the really plush bed and pillows. I actually checked the tag of the pillows to see if I could order them for myself (they're hotel branded). My only gripe with the room is that the always lit facade of the building cancels out the blackout curtains (see photo) so the room won't be totally dark.

However, despite being light sensitive when trying to sleep, I still had a fine time sleeping. That's how good the bed was.

Breakfast was good and one of the best breakfast buffets I've had for similarly priced hotels in terms of variety and taste. There was a buzzing mosquito though and I hope this can be resolved in the future.

Location is good, close to a few restaurants and also close to the Ayala mall and the A. Bichara Silverscreens Cinema.

This hotel is about 30-40 minutes from...

I read a few reviews about this Hotel and it was in my opinion a little misleading. |I travel a lot and there wasn’t a place where my expectations got crushed so badly. ||Pros: the bed was very comfortable and a proper king sized bed. |Staff is really helpful, friendly and accommodating. They even organized a driver for us to take us around which made our vacation tour-wise pretty great. |Has a room safe. Which should be a standard in any hotel anyway. |A/C is good. |Near ayala mall. 5 mins walk away. |20 mins walk away from SM Legazpi. I would take a taxi though (8 mins). ||I can’t give an opinion about the pool because we didn’t use it. ||Cons: the rooms were kinda outdated and need a proper cleaning. |Bathroom should have been cleaner. The smell in the bathroom was horrible. It had a really strong sewer smell. |The mini fridge in the rooms were functioning but i gotta say it was disgusting. Food and drinks are stored there. They should clean it. Scrub it if they have to. |The windows couldn’t be properly closed. You could feel the heat from outside when standing near the window. Thank God the a/c was functioning well. |Breakfast was a little meager. And hygiene should be the top priority. One morning we saw mini cockroaches crawling over the bread and hiding behind each slice of toast. |The cook doing the omelletes should be more attentive. I ordered omelets for 3 people. And he always did just one portion. I was waiting for 15 mins because he always did another guests order before mine. I had to order them separately each time. By the time mine was done. The others were finished with their food. It was so freaking annoying. And the portions were so tiny. That’s why him taking so long to make them...

The Hotel St. Ellis has the best breakfast buffet I've found anywhere, compared to at least a dozen hotels in the U.S. It also has a small but wonderful swimming pool, very good service, and a terrific shower. The biggest negative is that it provides absolutely no written instructions for operating the air conditioning, the TV, the Wifi, and the lights. It provides just one room key, no matter how many people are staying in the room. The air conditioning goes off at night, and can be restarted only by standing on a chair and pressing the button, but they don't tell you that. ||My wife and I suffered from overheating on the first night. Operating the TV requires pressing 2 or 3 buttons. The room has a power key -- a plastic card that must be inserted on a slot to get any electricity. I had to ask a staff member to connect by phone by WiFi on the ground floor and again on the 3rd floor, because they have 2 different systems. It took my wife and me a full day to figure everything out. The other family members, in another room, never did figure out the air conditioning, and suffered through all 3 nights.||It would take the hotel staff less than an hour to write out all these instructions on a single page and print a copy for each room, but they don't bother. If they did, I would give the hotel 4 and a half stars. Other members of my family were so confused by the lack of instructions that they gave the hotel just 3 stars. Their other complaint was that the walls on the stairway are in serious need of painting and repair, but this didn't really bother me.||Please, Hotel St. Ellis: get off your butts and write out the...