Samkara Restaurant and Garden Resort — Hotel in Lucban

Good Points||1. Room (Kaliwili 4). ||We booked only thru their FB Page which was easy enough for us, and as said in their page, they only accept cash transactions. Our room was ready when we got there, AC and TV was already on. I like it because in most of hotels we booked in Quezon, we have to wait for few minutes for the housekeeping to prep the room. My advice is to chat or text them on your ETA, so that they can prep the room ahead of time. The room was simple but really, really nice and it also gave us a nice view of the rice field at the back of the resort, and it has a small balcony. CR is quite large and clean and complete with basic toiletries. No bathtub though. ||||2. Food. ||On dinner, we had buffalo wings and shanghai rice which was tasty and have a nice plating. On our breakfast we had cornsilog and bangsilog. I found it funny when they have American and Filipino Style, but it’s just actually a silog meal with fruits as dessert. But it also tasted good. Cooked food from outside is unfortunately isn’t allowed, but they didn’t inspect our bags to when we checked-in, if I know that, I wish I smuggle some burger. Ha-ha. Just saying. ||||3. Surroundings.|| The resort overall gives you a relaxing atmosphere. I even picked some ideas when I going to build my own house. For those who’re looking for pre-nup or pre-debut pictorial set, this can be a good option, though some might find this spot limited. Unfortunately, they were just setting up some Christmas decor (even Halloween is still on its way) when we checked out and the hanging umbrellas was not there. Possibly because of recent typhoons. Those may be up there again in summer.||||4. Staff||Aside from the room and food, one I always observe in a hotel or resort is their staff. Good thing that Samkara has good staff, and I really hope that they are well paid for their services.||Observations for improvement||1. Room. ||The cable reception was interrupted or at least until late night when the signal became decent. There are 2 complimentary bottled water and tea, but they didn’t include creamer, sugar, optional like coffee and even a water heater. You’ll have to ask for it to the front desk. No room telephone, so if you have a lot of demands or requests, expect yourself to be walking back and forth. And ohh, they don’t have wifi, and data signal there sucks.||||2. Food.|| Too bad, food here is quite expensive. To give you an idea, 1 cup of rice was Php. 30.00 and shanghai rice, which is basically 2 cup of fried rice garnished with cucumber was Php. 120.00. Lucky for us, we weren’t that hungry that night, so we ordered just a little and it tasted good. Most of the food servings are good for 2-3 persons, except in breakfast meals. So if you’re a weak eater, find yourself some company to avoid excess food. Besides, food tastes better if you have someone to share it with. But if you’re some rich person, of course you wouldn’t mind this as long as it tastes good. ||||3. Pool. ||They only have one average sized pool with section for kids and adult. That’s it. One might not enjoy this during peak season caused everyone will be sharing this pool. ||||4. Quite expensive||As I said earlier food is quite expensive, and that goes for room rates too. I have been in many hotels and resorts within and outside of my home province (Quezon), and I can say SAMKARA is one of the resorts with overpriced room rates. I can understand their price for food, I mean almost every hotel does that. But Kaliwili 4 is a really nice room, but for Php 4,000.00 with no special inclusions or room features, it’s not “sulit”. For me, it should only cost around Php. 2,300.00-Php. 2,500.00. Php. 2,800.00 might be acceptable if they include things we didn’t get. I have been in hotels with hot spring swimming pool, bathtub, separate shower room, buffet breakfast with choices of American, Filipino (the true ones) and Chinese style, complimentary coffee, tea, , creamer, sugar and bottled water, slippers, and a WiFi which cost around Php, 2,800.00 to Php. 3,500.00 only. Well, this can be attributed to absence of competition in the area. That is probably why they milking that opportunity. ||||They also have a pasalubong store with some interesting delicacies there, but I didn’t bother asking for the price, given with their charges for food and room, I can already imagine. ||||To summarize everything - nice room, good food, great surroundings at a pricey...

First and foremost, Glen should be the ✨ Employee of the Year✨||🥇 According to him, they are short-staffed, so he's the only one taking and serving the orders (we were in one of the cottages). Although, I did see that there were wait staff in the restaurant, but yes, he was the only one running around to take care of the orders from the cottages.||🥇 Even though his plate was full (figuratively and literally) with all the customers he's handling, he was attentive to our requests and was approachable and patient when we asked him to take our photos several times. He asked if we want him to put the cake we brought to their refrigerator in the meantime, and he gave us extra plastic containers for our take outs - these, among a few other kind gestures, just show how much thought he puts into his work. Clearly, he takes pride in his job. ||🥇There was a misunderstanding with the Day Tour fee. We were told on the official FB Messenger that we don't need to pay that if we're to dine in and not use their pools. They also confirmed that we can take photos around and stay for as long as we like since we rented a cottage. But upon occupying the cottage, Glen asked us for the Day Tour Fee, and upon discussion and review of the Messenger conversation, he said it's all good, and we don't need to pay since it was what we're informed with during the booking process. No one admitted to the mistake, but Glen assured us that there's nothing to worry about. The cottages was supposedly for Day Tour guests only. |||For the price they ask their customers to pay, they should improve on a couple of things:||1. Alignment and coordination of staff - if the staff I was talking to when booking for this occasion was well-informed about the Day Tour fee, then there wouldn't be any misunderstanding, as I can and am willing to pay, if that's something I needed to settle to get in, of course. At least, they took accountability of their mistake (although, no one admitted to the mistake as per Glen).||2. We went to the bar to order iced coffee for the five of us. The male barista was taking and making other orders when we approached him. He then listed our orders and asked us to give the piece of paper to Glen because according to him, all our orders should be through him. However, Glen was no where to be found. We looked around for a bit before we decided to ask the female staff behind the counter. We told that the barista asked us to give our orders to Glen, but we can't find him, so we asked her what should we do next. That's when the barista said that he will give our orders to Glen, and the other staff seconded. However, in the first place, why would you ask a paying customer to go look for the wait staff to order food that you're selling as a business? Why would you ask a customer to take an extra step on purchasing your goods and services? You should make it super easy for your customers to spend money on your business, not the other way around. We were told by the female staff that Glen was on a lunch break. If you have just one wait staff, you should be coordinated enough that you know when he's on a lunch break and not ask your customer to go to him, when you should know that he will probably in the back room resting and eating.||3. Glen asked if we'd like our halo halo to be served later, and that's nice and is usual for a premium restaurant, but he already served the brownie ala mode with ice cream on top, and it was scorching hot, so naturally, it was already melted when it reached our table. If you're serving dessert, you should also ask if the customer wants it served later especially if it has ice cream on it! We hurriedly set our table to eat because of the melting ice cream.||4. The place was beautiful overall, but was not well-maintained. You can tell it's old because there are cobwebs on a lot of areas.||5. Please add a staff or two. You market your garden resort and restaurant as premium, so you should be able to afford hiring at...

Place is definitely good for relaxation... Me and my friends went there for an overnight stay... the view of the rice field is refreshing as well as the sound of birds chirping and the cocks crowing... the staff is super accommodating... their service is good... before every mealtime you will be visited by at least one staff member to ask for your preferred menu and if the meal is ready one of them again will visit your room to deliver the meal or if you have chosen to eat in their restaurant they will personally lead you to your table where they have arranged your meal... the funny thing is if you're still not ready to eat, every 10 minutes, one of them will come back to your room and remind you that your table is ready... they are also approachable, they even helped us with our planned birthday surprise for one of my friends... kudos to the staff! 😊

The place, on the other hand, not to mention the rice field, is picturesque so you don't need to worry about scenes if you like to post on instagram... food is ok... but only 85% of the meals in the menu are available because they often get out of stock...

Our stay there is something that I could never forget for during the night, we have noticed a farm rat roaming at the roof bars (house frame) on the ifugao hut that we rented in (the hut unlike other huts, have no ceiling, that's why we could see the rat going back and forth on the bars)... it should not be a big deal for farm rats are not that harmful and the said hut was actually our choice because of the unique stay that we want to experience... but since one of us have trauma on rats, we still decided to address this matter to the management, and to our surprise, they quickly acted on it and with still cheerful faces, lead us to our new room which is actually one of their suites that is far more expensive than the one we rented...

I am giving this place an overall rating of five star because of their honest service and professionalism... I just hope they could find ways to improve their ifugao hut to avoid future rodent issues because to be honest, this hut is one of my favorite...