大连酒店 Lido de Paris Hotel — Hotel in Manila

Forget any association with "Paris" that the name of the hotel might conjure in your mind. The hotel seemed to mostly have Chinese guests and Chinese staff. It is in Chinatown and we had to go on a weird back street to get to the front door because the front entrance is one way the wrong way from the direction we were coming. The neighborhood at 11:30 PM at night when we arrived did not look inviting. I wasn't very comfortable even going to the 7/11 across the street.|| The taxi driver did not know where the hotel was and the front desk seemed incapable of giving directions that a taxi driver would readily understand. The taxi driver had to call 2 or 3 times before he found the place. A Philippines cell phone with load or an international cell phone with roaming activated is a must if you want to stay at this hotel.|| We were staying overnight between a domestic and international flight and it is definitely inconveniently located compared to the airport. We have stayed both in Malate/Ermita and Makati before and the coupon taxis from the airport to Malate and Makati are a lot cheaper than to here. The places we stayed in in Makati and Malate were of a much higher standard also.|| We were given a room that wreaked of smoke and told we would have to spend a substantial amount of money (around an extra 50%) to upgrade to a non-smoking room. After half an hour of looking around, they did find us a room on the smoking floor that at least didn't wreak of smoke.|| The hotel seemed rather dead overall, maybe 30% occupancy?|| The bed felt like it had sand or grit in it. The a/c was OK, not great. The breakfast was fairly poor quality.|| We definitely won't stay here again. The BSA Towers in Makati near Greenbelt are much, much better as is Robinson's Place in Malate/Ermita, although Robinson's Place requires a 3 night minimum stay which didn't suit us on...

Second time to stay here. First was in a double standard and recently, in a single standard room.||||The rooms are comfortable to stay at. It is clean and has most of what an average family needs.||Their most affordable room is quite big already. All rooms have full cable TV with channels reaching to 70+. All rooms also have bath tubs. Air conditioning is good. Daily breakfast for two is a plus as well since the hotel's breakfast is above average. All floors have free fast wi-fi access.||||Two complaints so far. Niño, the receptionist, gave me false information. Nothing serious, but disappointing. I asked if their flat screen TV has a USB slot. I specifically described it as the standard USB used in computers and not other ports like HDMI. He confirmed several times that the TVs have USB slots. Unfortunately, on my second stay, it only has HDMI slot. Even their maintenance man was unsure.||||Same guy, Niño confirmed they accept credit card and I can use it already. Sadly, the other receptionist informed me the other day that their credit card reader was unavailable for several days already.||||Another downside is that the hotel doesn't have a swimming pool and some of their rooms smell cigarette smokes.||||Minor complaints but very good place to stay at if on a budget. China town is a very nice place to venture on so if you need an affordable place to stay, this one here is...

We have been travelling in many counties and suffered through the box spring beds of central America and the rigid SE Asia beds but this place was a new challenge. The mattresses were actually two inches of hard foam covered by very thick vinyl. I most likened them to boat cushions. I have had a better sleep on a bus terminal bench. The hotel is a special example of false front covering a bad inside. The lobby can only be described as grandiose. Gold and mirrors galore. High end shops for travel, wine and more. The restaurant had lobsters that cost over 300 dollars each along with many delicacies like shark and poisonous stone fish. They told me their target market was Chinese and I guess they want to show off. I thought we had really scored until we went upstairs. They gave us one bed for a booking of a family of three. No fridge as promised. The fitness center they listed was in fact another company and they wanted ten bucks each for us to exercise and you had to buy a towel or shower as extra. The room was shabby with very poor air con. To top it off outside the hotel families with infant babies were living on the sidewalks. Heartbreaking for us to go from the splendor of the lobby to the reality of the lowest level of poverty. We booked a boat out of Manila the next day. You will not see any other tourists from the west in Manila and now...