St Giles Hotel Makati — Hotel in Makati

POSITIVES:

Fred and the other doormen guys. They are always on standby to help take luggage or for local information on the area.

Many of the staff were very hard working and friendly.

NEGATIVES: Coakroach infested room as in tons of cockroach. They were crawling over the bed, the floor, walls and ceiling like something out of silent hill 2 horror movie. How could it even reach that state?

Cockroaches in compensation upgraded room, so moved rooms a 2nd and 3rd time!

In the final room there were no roaches for a day or 2 and then we see 2 come back again. We give up trying to complain at this point and need to deal with the roaches ourselves...

Breakfast all food cold and 1 egg which was left standing for no idea how long was given from the shelf ice cold. Must have been waiting there all morning. Orange juice was fake, powder supplement styled juices instead of fresh fruit. Disgusting worst breakfast buffet in Philippines. Most days we ate cold rice and baked beans with some not very fresh water melon. Includes photos of the breakfasts. There were other options such as vegetables, but even coming straight from the kitchen, parts of the tray was fridge cold.

The tables for breakfast were sometimes completely used and when tables did become free or were available, you had to find your own knives n forks.

The queue to get into this insane, overpacked, completely unorganised chaos is 10minutes on Saturdays. So many people waited in a queue that they were falling into the stairwell and some couldn't exit elevators.

Lifts can take sometimes 15minutes despite being 4 of them, because there's so many guests using at the same time. They stop on every floor which adds another 10minutes so always add 25minutes to elevator time or you'll miss appointments, breakfast or simply trying to leave the hotel.

Internet very unstable, always lost connections when I was working in meetings. We ended up buying a sim card from the local mall and paying daily for Internet which was 10 times faster than St Giles WiFi. It should also be noted that any other hotel we've stayed in had consistent strong signals for WiFi at around 400.0mbs. St Giles speed was often around 0.8mbs...

Room cleaning we leave the room after breakfast around 11am see the cleaners outside, say good morning and push the "Make up" room green light. Come back at 1pm every day and it's never cleaned. They only seem to clean rooms before 10am but we are usually busy in the room until 11am. We would need to call room cleaning every day to make sure people come or wed never get clean towels.

The actual room cleaning itself consists of changing the bins and bedsheets depending on whose cleaning, but no actual cleaning whatsoever from what we observed during the times we saw cleaners, except for one who did use a hoover.

The gym is still the ancient, dusty, rusty old outdated equipment they had a year ago, and last year I was complaining about the state of the gym. It's disgusting.

The pool water smells funny and is a dark blue/yellow colour. I think most people would get sick from having a drop of that go in their mouth by accident.

CONCLUSIONS: Having lived and worked in most countries of the world, the Philippines is my favourite place on Earth. The St Giles Hotel having given this place a negative 1 year ago and coming back to give it another chance due to management claiming it had improved, actually turned out to be worse in absolutely every sense.

If we were offered the entire stays money as a refund to this hotel, we'll it would be "Ok" but still not justify the horrors we encountered here. Maybe it's OK for dirty old men who just want a quick room for a stag with the local prostitutes, but you wouldn't want to bring loved ones here, or anyone who you care about.

As a hotel, there is no way this place would rate above a 1 star hotel. It is the absolute pits of hell and the only way to fix it, would be to bulldoze to the ground and rebuild...

I actually wasn't planning to write a review, but I wasn't satisfied with how the hotel handled the situation. This was my first time at St. Giles since 2017. I used to work with UCPB, and back in the day, we always checked in at St. Giles; it was our top hotel pick. The service, room, and food were great back then.However, during my last check-in on Feb 21, 2024, the room was acceptably small because that's the only room I selected. Although the comfort room was a bit small, the shower room door leaks water, which drenches the toilet floor area. The most disappointing aspect was the presence of lots of cockroaches. The Wi-Fi router is home to tons of cockroaches that come out at night to fly around the room. Whenever you put something on that table where the router is, they will come out. It was scary and super unsanitary. I did not make a big deal out of the situation, and that is my fault. I should have asked to be transferred to a different room, but because I was so tired, I just dealt with the issue myself and sprayed alcohol every time a cockroach appeared.Upon check-out, I mentioned this to the front desk, and they acknowledged the issue. They even told me that they were already aware of it. They asked me to speak to my supervisor, but I was in a hurry for a meeting, so I just left my contact info for the supervisor to call me. After an hour, a maintenance or cleaning staff member called me to apologize for what happened. He was just a staff member, and I felt like he was not the person to call me, as he can only do very little if this issue has been existing for a while, given that they are already aware of it. I felt like the supervisor or manager should have called and assured me that the issue is being taken care of and that pest control is set to be done for the entire property. Because I don’t believe that it was an isolated case. This issue will ruin the image of this 5-star hotel if not taken care of properly.Maybe I'd come back and recommend this property once I know and am assured that the cockroach situation has been taken care of. By the way, the breakfast buffet food is now bad. They used to have a continental breakfast, but now they don’t even have bacon and dessert. Very low-quality deli ham and tough...

One Star is extremely generous to give this hotel...and that one star is because of the helpful front desk receptionist and the security guards. Other than that, this hotel is terrible.

Even though the hotel was just built in 2010, it feels like a 60-year old facility....with zero investment on infrastructure maintenance. Overall building ventilation is horrible. The interior air literally reaks of some pungent smell. So, I thought, oh well, maybe it's just the lobby. But nah!...it's the entire interior of the building....hallways, etc. Okay, what about my assigned room....same crap. The room has the same smell as the entire building.

As soon as I entered my room, I realized this was a mistake. The room smells like it hadn't been refreshed in decades. The carpet was dirty and in need of serious replacement. The linens were old and way past their reusable life. The pillows should have been burned 🔥 ten years ago. I don't think they ever changed the pillows. They just change pillowcases once in awhile. I could literally smell the sweat and body odor of everyone that's ever stayed in that room. Pillows need to be replaced periodically.....not just pillowcases. The bedsheets are also skimpy, dirty and old. All the linens are extremely old! New linens are badly needed.

I scrambled to find other hotels in the area (even if I have to eat this cost) but everything was sold out. So, I had no choice but to stay here for the two nights that I booked.

Anyway, I ran across the street to the nearest Seven-Eleven and purchased alcohol disinfectant to spay down the entire room and linens to protect from catching anything.

The entire interior of this hotel needs to be completely refurbished, remodeled.......AND continuously maintained!

My Recommendations:

1. Get rid of ALL carpeting everywhere. It makes the whole place smell stinky and musty....even inside the rooms.

2. Buy new Pillows, pillowcases and bedsheets...PLEASE! We need a clean comfortable bed and pillows to lay our head. That's what we pay for.

3. Replace furniture and decor.

4. Service the elevators so they don't make that scary, cranky, noise like a meat-hauler.

So,...