Days Hotel Cebu

...even consider the shamefully shabby Days Hotel Cebu for your holiday.

Our travel party had expected decent accommodations in this Days Hotel, since Cebu City happens to be one of the larger and exciting cities in the Visayas region of Southern Philippines (a cluster of islands in the center of the archipelago). Well, were we ever so wrong!


A Bit About Cebu.

Cebu City brims with historical significance. ...
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What is this Days Hotel?

The Days Hotel Cebu is one of four Philippine franchises of the US Days Inn chain, and is located in Lapu-Lapu City on tiny Mactan Island, which is linked by two bridges to the mainland province. It's a few minutes' drive from the Mactan-Cebu International Airport, and a half-hour's drive from downtown Cebu City. It sits on the edge of the economically progressive Mactan Export Processing Zone.
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If you ever plan to visit the bustling city and province of Cebu, Philippines, take note: DO NOT even consider the shamefully shabby Days Hotel Cebu for your holiday.

Our travel party had expected decent accommodations in this Days Hotel, since Cebu City happens to be one of the larger and exciting cities in the Visayas region of Southern Philippines (a cluster of islands in the center of the archipelago). Well, were we ever so wrong!

A Bit About Cebu.

Cebu City brims with historical significance. It's the oldest Christian city in the Philippines, established by Spanish colonizer Miguel Lopez de Legaspi in 1571. (The country's oldest avenue is Colon St. in busy downtown Cebu City, named oddly after Christopher Columbus.) Decades before Legaspi's arrival, Portuguese explorer Fernando de Magallanes/Ferdinand Magellan first stumbled onto the shores of Leyte (one of the Visayan isles) in 1521 in search of the Spice Islands. He eventually found his way to Mactan Island, only to be killed by Lapu-Lapu, the warrior chief of Mactan.

Today Cebu (yes, the province and the city bear the same name) offers the visitor many beautiful beaches and coral reefs, colourful holidays (especially the January 'Sinulog' festival) and boasts a very productive mango- and other fruit-growing and processing industry as well as a thriving manufacturing zone of semiconductors, electronic watches (Timex), electrical equipment, cameras (Asahi-Pentax) and well-crafted furniture. It's only second in size to the country's capital, Metro Manila. Cebu also has its own international airport on Mactan Island, as only a few other Philippine cities do.

What is this Days Hotel?

The Days Hotel Cebu is one of four Philippine franchises of the US Days Inn chain, and is located in Lapu-Lapu City on tiny Mactan Island, which is linked by two bridges to the mainland province. It's a few minutes' drive from the Mactan-Cebu International Airport, and a half-hour's drive from downtown Cebu City. It sits on the edge of the economically progressive Mactan Export Processing Zone.

Alas, it also stands as one of the worst Days hotels I've stayed in. It's not THE worst I've known; it's easily matched by that other 'renovator's dream' called the Days Inn of Old Alexandria, Virginia in the USA.

The booking was kindly done for us by a relative in the Philippines, sight unseen, before we left the USA. On our island-hopping trip we first flew from Iloilo (pronounced EEH'-LOH EEH'-LOH;, another Visayan capital located near the southern tip of Panay island west of Cebu) to Cebu. Landing at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport, our hopes were raised for an even NICER hotel in this much bigger city. What would later heighten our disappointment with Days Hotel Cebu was our happy experience the previous week with the Days Hotel in Iloilo City. There we had enjoyed finer surroundings with a much higher standard of service, generous amenities, and an excellent restaurant (a review of that property is pending).

Checking In.

Upon alighting from the shuttle bus, I noticed the handicap ramp that had been added to the left of the concrete steps leading up to the lobby. I thought the angle of the ramp a bit steep for a wheelchair to negotiate, but this isn't the States: here, it's a good thing there are any handicap ramps available at all. (Not sure if it's already required by law or merely recommended.)

Only two of the three rooms reserved for our party were ready at the time we arrived, about 9 in the morning. Not a problem, as check-in time was at 2 pm.

The lobby was a tiny and uninspired affair, with front glass walls and a swinging glass doors, linoleum floor and a slightly worn, low, cloth-covered armchair and loveseat to one side, and a small table and two wooden chairs to the other.

The three women at the front desk were nice enough, although I quickly missed the greater warmth and efficiency of the staff at the Iloilo Days Hotel. After the usual check-in process, we requested our card keys - just for the two available rooms.

Surprisingly, they could spare us only one precious card key per room, and in a security-unwise decision on the hotel's part, the room number had been hand-written in felt-tipped pen in one corner of the card's back, protected by a piece of cellophane tape. (In contrast, the Iloilo Days Hotel gave us two card keys each, tucked in a small yellow plastic booklet, with the room number written on the booklet and not on the card itself, just as is usual in the US.) Our cards looked pretty worn, too, so I doubt if the codes/cards were ever changed between hotel guests.

Corridors That Time Forgot.

Heading for one available room to leave our luggage, we went up the lift, and stepping out on our floor, were struck by the dishevelled condition of the hotel corridor - a sad portent of things to come. The thin carpeting suggested an original shade of burgundy, and several years' worth of accumulated grey dust now clung to it. The ragged seams between carpet sections were not always tacked or glued down securely. The dull, dark brown wooden walls sometimes showed water stains and warping. They likely never got a cleaning or repainting job since the hotel's grand opening (just seven years before, according to one of the front desk staff). The dim lighting consisted of widely spaced, fluorescent bulbs.

Doors to the fire exit stairs leading from floor to floor were left ajar. Pieces had chipped off the front edge of some stair steps, and on one floor a light bulb was missing. A luggage trolley had been inconveniently parked right at the foot of the first story stairs, too. Not exactly safety-conscious features!

The Pathetic Hotel Rooms.

Upon opening the door to our room (I think it was a standard room), a thick, musty smell hit us. Although a little mustiness isn't unusual in this most humid and tropical country - especially if the hotel is near a beach - the unpleasant odour of the room forced me to take shallow breaths at first. Windows couldn't be opened, so I turned on the ancient and grimy window air conditioning unit placed high up on the far wall (in contrast, the Iloilo hotel had a large floor unit in each room). The appliance seemed to make more noise than it blew cold air!

There were two queen beds and a nightstand with a telephone (despite several wipes with disinfectant, its mouthpiece retained a foul odour), and a long work desk and chair just below the air-con unit. A television sat on a large generic wooden chest of drawers next to the long desk. It was hooked up to SkyCable, which offers a very varied lineup of channels and shows from Southeast Asia (Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese and Australian) the USA (HBO, CNN International, I think), and a few others I can't recall. (I don't remember the TV brand, but the TV remote had a weirdly user-unfriendly layout for the volume buttons: left for louder, right for softer.) Two upholstered chairs and a small round table next to the curtained windows completed the furniture.

A bathroom sink and open hanging closet were separate from the toilet-bath area, in which one found a basic, industrial-type toilet and a regular-sized shower stall closed off by translucent sliding glass doors. Having noticed the absence of any towels in the room, we immediately requested some from housekeeping.

My first shock would come when I finally received the towels. An hour later, instead of the three sets I'd asked for, I got only two small hair towels, if you could call them that. The miserable rags masquerading as towels looked like they'd never met a bleaching agent in their long, long lives. Tattletale grey, with most of the pile gone, the cloth ends had fringed so badly they looked almost decorative. The 'towels' were clean, at least. I think. I hope.

I put in a request for proper bath towels. Little did I know that an hour's wait would be the epitome of towel-providing efficiency here. After another couple of calls to and a subsequent personal reminder left with the front desk clerk, I would finally receive the additional towels - sans one requested piece - at close to midnight of our first day here - fourteen hours later.

After freshening up for our brunch, I removed the suspect bed covers, folding and tucking them away in the closet. The threadbare bed sheets looked clean enough, showed a more creamy white and less grey appearance than the pitiful towels, and showed spots where stitched repairs had been done (carefully hidden in the folds by the cleaning staff). Pillows were pancake-flat, semi-solid, lumpy affairs. Thankfully, the bed mattress gave sufficiently firm support for my back. And we didn't notice any pesky bugs or ants in the beds or the rooms, either.

The Amenities, or More Accurately, What Amenities?

The measly free amenities came in the form of tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner, and two small bars of soap - none of the usual shower cap, shoe mitt, dental kit, etc. A small card next to the sink advised the guest to call the front desk for other amenities - and I would get only the second shock of my stay when I went ahead and asked for more.

I was to learn that none of the toiletries already in the room were free for the asking. Each item - the cheap shower cap, dental kit, etc, - would cost the royal sum of 50 PhP (Philippine pesos; this amount was equivalent to about one US dollar at the exchange rate then; about 0.55 GBP / 0.80 EUR). This was highway robbery, if you ask me, since the Iloilo Days Hotel had generously provided all these items daily, at no extra cost to us!

Of course, it would come as no surprise by now that the room also lacked any provision for an internet connection. Neither was there an in-room coffee maker, a refrigerator/bar, a clothes iron or a hair dryer. This hotel was clearly not aimed at business people visiting Cebu.

Then there was the missing telephone directory. I searched everywhere in the room and found none (although a Bible was tucked away in a drawer). So I requested one, and when the fellow delivered it to our door, I couldn't resist asking him, half-seriously, in the vernacular,

'Is this free, or is there also a charge for the directory?'

He promptly reassured me that there was none. Poor guy, he missed my sarcasm, and was only doing as he was told. His get-up consisted of jeans and a worn-out, white t-shirt with a name tag attached to the chest area, not very professional-looking at all.

'OH!', The Restaurant. 'OH!', Indeed.

Called 'OH!', the hotel's dining establishment ('dining' seems too fine a word for it) was accessible by simply traversing the elliptical hotel driveway. Oh, but wait - that's no ordinary path to 'OH!' Between the higher-level entrance and lower-level exit driveways, one had to negotiate a series of small, narrow and shallow concrete steps that changed width and direction willy-nilly. In a dim light, the idiotically designed steps offered the guest a good chance of tripping and possibly falling headlong into one of two deep, rectangular pools of water on each side (a fate that should befall the genius who thought them up). Having successfully descended the 'stairs', one then stepped across the exit driveway towards the restaurant entrance.

(Of course, alternatively, one could avoid the perilous steps altogether by taking the hotel driveway around to the restaurant!)

'OH!' would match the hotel in its general state of dishevelment. Service was acceptable and appropriate to the quality of the place (not a compliment!). A couple of orders were mixed up, but that was understandable with a party of nine. The food (consisting mostly of traditional Filipino fare such as highly seasoned hot casseroles, boiled and fried meat and fish dishes, sautéed vegetables, and a few sandwiches) was served in a very ordinary, home-cooked manner, with little attention paid to aesthetics. (By this time we were past expecting any hint of aesthetics from this hotel and restaurant!). The fare was rather flavourful to our native palates, and very reasonably priced (if memory serves me correctly, each entrée cost the equivalent of some 2 to 3 US dollars (about 1 to 1.72 GBP / 1.7 to 2.53 EUR), each of which could serve two people - a real bargain).

Uh-'OH!'.

We would suspect trouble with the food, however, when one person in our party suddenly got very sick to her stomach within a few hours of our brunch. Unlike the rest of us, she had eaten sandwiches with mayonnaise in them.

It's a truism that all travellers should know (and most Filipinos already realize) that in tropical countries, especially in the provinces, one can't be too careful about the food. Hot-cooked dishes are generally a safer choice. The mayo, ingredients, and/or sandwiches may not have been stored at a constant, refrigerated temperature (in order to avoid any Staphylococcus infection, especially), which was likely the case here!

Another observation that made us wonder about the clientele patronizing the hotel and restaurant was the presence of quite a few 'odd couples' at the tables - usually a very casually dressed, non-Filipino man in the company of a much smaller Filipino woman with an unusually easy, casual manner and figure-hugging outfit - such couples always raise eyebrows among Filipinos for reasons you just might be able to guess.

Leaving the Place. At Last.

Luckily, our Cebu stay would last just two nights. I had to resist the temptation to move for the second night to the famously fabulous luxury hotel, the Mactan Shangri-La (located about a half-hour further away from the airport and costing twice as much); we just opted to bear with the dinky place for just one more day.

On the second evening, a familiar lobby scene would provide unintentional amusement. Arriving back at the hotel from a day of gallivanting around Cebu City and environs, we would overhear a female guest voicing a complaint at the front desk.

'Look,' she said in the vernacular, ' I'm already about to check out of this place and I STILL haven't got any of the towels I had requested!'

We had to chuckle wearily. So we weren't the only ones plagued by this towel problem. It was hotel-wide.

We complained to the front desk staff about the appalling shortage of old, thin towels and the generally sorry state of the hotel. The clerks couldn't do much more than offer their apologies and even shared with us the grievances expressed by other, previous guests. When I asked to see the manager, I was told that he was (conveniently) off that day.

In the midst of my griping, my heart also went out to these women, struggling to do their best in a job that was probably hard to come by in these difficult days, despite an abominable lack of support and training from the absentee manager (a certain E. B. who never seemed to be on the premises, and who deserves a dressing-down and some forty lashes, perhaps). We were also advised to bring our complaints to the head office in Manila (and a relative would eventually do so).

A Few Good Things…

Let's see…the hotel's only a few minutes' drive from the International Airport.

Okay, but who'd want to stay in a dump even if it were situated right next to the tarmac, unless one were a desperate, hole-in-the-pocket, extremely budget fare tourist, perhaps? The 50 US dollars ( ~ 29 GBP / 42 EUR) in savings per night were certainly not worth the discomfort and inconvenience we were served up at this blight of Cebu hotels - unless you're really in dire circumstances or an incorrigible cheapskate.

Another scant plus: the shower gave a nice, warm and wide shower stream. (I'm clutching at straws here.) Finally, despite their being beleaguered (as we imagined) by complaints from some guests the staff remained decent, friendly and never rude throughout. They just seemed to need more training in running a nicer hotel.

A Couple of Tips For the Uninitiated Tropical Tourist.

DO NOT STAY AT THE DAYS HOTEL CEBU. Make sure you book yourselves at a hotel recommended by someone who's actually been there, or by a reliable website that reviews hotels. Do not assume anything to be so - personal reviews are still more credible. And please, don't believe those incredibly, suspiciously favourable (bogus?) ratings of this same hotel that I spotted on the Internet (at a site called 'goasia.com' or similar), and be similarly suspicious of the official Days Inn USA rating of five (5) sunbursts!

Stay instead at the downtown MARRIOTT, or for real luxury and elegance at very reasonable rates, at the fabulous and elegant MACTAN SHANGRI-LA ISLAND RESORT, or even the lovely PLANTATION BAY RESORT AND SPA!

CHOOSE THE FOODS YOU EAT CAREFULLY. Go with freshly prepared and hot, cooked (boiled, fried, grilled) foods. Avoid mayo-containing dishes and sandwiches, and raw foods like green salads, oysters and other uncooked shellfish, etc. Unless, of course, you can't resist being REALLY adventurous (or foolhardy).

NOTES:

For those who choose to ignore my warning about the Days Hotel Cebu, here's more info.

What really eludes me is why the official Days Inn, USA, website blessed this property with a rating of five (yes, 5) yellow sunbursts. Obviously, no one's visited in the last few months, or years. I shall definitely inform them of our own unpleasant experience with the place.

Info from its official website: http://www.daysinn.com/DaysInn/control/Booking/property_info?propertyId=06340&brandInfo=DI )

127 Guest Rooms, including 117 Deluxe rooms, 5 Days Deluxe rooms and 5 Days Suites, a function room, business center. The Front Desk is manned 24 hours a day, and pets are allowed.

Days Hotel Cebu
Matumbo Pusok Hills * Across Timex Complex, Lapu-Lapu City, ** 6016, PH
Phone: 633-249-55382 * Fax: 633-249-55382 * E-mail: dayscebu@arcon.com.ph

Check In: 02:00 PM Check Out: 12:00 PM

Current room rates range from US$ 34 to US$ 50 ( ~ 19 to 29 GBP / 29 to 42 EUR) , depending on the room and whether single or double (twin). Check out TravelMart.net website for rates and reservations.

TravelMart.net
http://www.travelmart.net/philippinescebu/dayshotel/#rates

 

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