Costa Marina Beach Resort — Hotel in Samal

We chose Costa Marina for our Annual Get-ogether (January 3-5, 2020) because of its accessibility to the city and its a spotlessly-cleaned resort. The long beach line is ideal for our team building. The quiet evening by the beach and the peaceful tropical setting is a welcome treat to our team mates with spouses or with their entire family who were first timers to Samal Island. The staff are friendly and courteous. But if you are staying overnight, be prepared to pay a higher price. You will be paying for all your meals and snack as bringing of food is not allowed. The food servings isn't as generous as I thought and its a bit pricey. The food is delicious but with limited choices compared to its cousin resort, Paradise. Upon booking for a pax of 60 for two nights, the sales staff assured me that the basic necessities for comfort are made available like hot water kettle and coffee/tea, tissue. They required full payment of room accommodations so in turn I expected a convenient stay. Knowing that the room rate is priced at 4,500/night and children above 2 are counted-- quite expensive, I had to reiterate that some participants would be coming with their little kids and travelling all the way from CDO. Because of their no food or drinks or anything should be brought to the cottage policy, no one dared to bring any food or a stash of hot drinks. No coffee has been been provided for the guests in each room. I had to ask at the resto and they did provide thermos with hot water and that's it. No coffee, no milo or tea. Several of the team mates were forced to get their caffeine fix in the resto, priced at php 50.00 for a stick/cup. I was not expecting an old thermos similar to what you bring to hospital, I was thinking of a kettle (expensive room rates, remember!) The restaurant manager reasoned that coffee (Nescafe instant or 3-in-1) will be provided for during the breakfast only which also came late because the kitchen has bee understaffed. The most annoying part: We booked 60 pax for our dinner buffet at the pavillion and a huge lechon. During the check out, this Ms.Staff who never showed up during our two-day event just came up and surprised me and my boss with an added amount of 18,000.00 to our bill because she said, our contract is 60 pax and we exceeded to 90 ( they must have counted shadows because there were only 70 of us including little children). We tried to explain that no additional cost has been incurred, in-fact, food was excessive because we also had lechon and that they did not add a refill. We even ended up giving the extra food to others. She insisted that we pay the additional amount and she only listened when I argued that sharing of food to kids because it is abundant shouldn't be billed at all and at 18k at that? Our food for 60 (40 adults) ala carte on two lunches and one dinner was only for an average of 14k/ meal and remember - they're not generous in their servings. ||I recommend this resort only for a day tour because you can bring in your food with you. They are not ready for a large group yet. Still our team mates had fun and loved the beauty...

TL;DR worst service I've experienced with the hospitality industry. Hands down.

THEY DOUBLE-BOOKED US!! AND THEY WANTED US TO MOVE BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T HAVE IT NOTED DOWN THAT TODAY WAS BOOKED! They wanted us to move AFTER WE'D ALREADY PAID IN FULL! They wanted us to move to a cheaper room and only want to give us consumables in return, and we had to lose our temper before we got the claim to a refund! The absolute gall!!

Their service really pulls everything down! All their policies are purportedly from some "head office". Staff are too rigid and too eager to enforce policies that are hardly welcoming.

You want to ask about room rates and see the room, but they will ONLY let one person in the ENTIRE premises; the rest have to wait outside. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Full payment up front. NO EXCEPTIONS.

The front desk only knows which rooms are booked ON THE DAY.

They have wifi but their staff don't turn it on and you have to wait for the morning for it to be turned on, because there's no way to contact the night staff so you have to go to the front desk physically, to find out that there ARE NO NIGHT STAFF except the booth is manned by a guard who lacks courtesy, is no help and clearly doesn't want to help, will only STARE at you while you struggle with your bags, claiming he can only act if he has advice from the "head office".

None of the wifi they purportedly have works.

They won't let you park inside their gated premises, even if you're the only guests around, so senior citizens and people with babies have to hoof it right from the gate down a slippery slope.

You can find better breakfast at a roadside eatery.

Good rooms, terrible service. None of you come here. Not...

The overall stay was nice, I like more than paradise Island because the arrangement is made in a better way, more romantic and nice, and the cottage are nice too. The staff and waiters we had were also very nice and helpful. Food is OK but it's not something to die for. The good point was complementary water (2 bottles and fresh pitcher of water) and coffee were brought to the cottage terrace every day. The 2 points I didn't like were: Even the check-in is at 2 pm, hence we arrived earlier arround 11:30am and they were not much people, they could have let us take possession of the cottage earlier arround 12:00 without asking us 500 PHP additional charges, so we didn't take it. The second point was the boat, ok when we went to the island we were the only ones so the boat staff told us either we wait and pay the normal fare of 25 PHP per PAX or we pay 300 PHP if we don't want wait, what we did. But when we went back, they ask us also to pay 300 PHP instead of the 25 even there was a boat arriving with 12 passengers, so in any case that boat has to return empty anyway, so there was no point to ask us to pay for the entire boat, he didn't came empty just for us. That's why I give only 3 stars for the service even we haven't to complain for anything else, I just didn't like their carelessness of commercial gesture about check-in and the boat...