Hotel Review: Golden Phoenix Hotel Manila

If you love to shop at SM Mall of Asia, attend events at SMX Convention Center or watch concerts at Mall of Asia Arena, it’s more convenient if you have a place to stay so that you can sleep soundly after a very tiring day. I had a chance to stay at Golden Phoenix Hotel Manila and I must say, I had a mixed feeling as I stay and after leaving the hotel.

Golden Phoenix Hotel Manila is located beside the Mall of Asia grounds. For some reason I didn’t able to find the hotel easily. After some observation, I found out that it’s a hotel/condominium (no wonder I got lost since looking at the back of the hotel (from where I made my way going there), I thought it’s a condominium building).

Room Features

I stayed at their Deluxe Twin Room with two twin size beds available. Check in time is 2:00PM and check out is 12:00PM the next day. The beds are comfortable plus the room is spacious. There’s complimentary bottled water for two, sachets of coffee, sugar and tea if you need to warm up your tummy.

Cup of noodles, snacks and other drinks inside the fridge are not for free. You will be charge when you check-out after your stay. There’s a list of prices on the snack shelf so you can check if the prices are good for your budget.

Mini-bar.

Safety vault for your personal belongings.

Toiletries are also complete and good for two people. The bathroom has rainfall and telephone showers with heater. Bathrobes and hairdryer are also available. Although the bathroom is small, it’s clean so a thumbs-up for it.

You can connect to their WIFI connection for up to two gadgets. Cable TV is also available so you can surf the television if you want to.

Telephone and iPod dock if you feel like listening to music.

The window is wide, with table and chairs so you can enjoy the view while sipping a hot cup of coffee.

I didn’t able to take a photo of the gym and pool area but you can access them for free. The gym is spacious and well-maintained that I really had fun doing my daily gym routine. For the pool, I don’t know. Although it’s clean, I didn’t feel like dipping in it after I first saw it.

My Hotel Experience

After my confirmed booking, I decided to check out reviews about Golden Phoenix Manila Hotel. I stumbled upon good and mostly bad reviews about them. With that, I decided to take note of everything and find it out myself if those are true or not.

The staffs are nice and even accompanied me going to the hotel room. And yep, it is necessary that he (the staff) helped me with that because going to my room is like exploring a maze. There are a lot of turns going to the hotel elevator because the nearest one is for the condo tenants to use.
The carpet flooring (which has the negative reviews) is indeed true. It’s dirty and you can see the footstep marks and trolley traces clearly. I guess they just chose the wrong color for it since its normal for carpet flooring to get dirty.
My stay at the hotel didn’t have a complimentary breakfast included. Weird, right? But who am I to complain? If only I have some extra money to avail their breakfast, I would love too but well, there are lots of restaurants and convenience stores outside and surely, it’s cheaper.
One thing I got annoyed about are the staffs who are loudly talking at the hallway. I believe that the employees lounge is located near our room (if I’m not mistaken because I saw some employees in groups talking outside a certain room and I'm sure it's not one of the hotel rooms). And even I’m at the window area of the room, I can still hear them talking out loud.
Staying in my room is comfortable. I had a relaxing stay and I can’t complain anything about it. The room is well maintained, the beds are big and you just want to lie down the whole duration of your stay and get a well-deserve sleep.
The gym instructor is quite intimidating. So I am glad that when I finally decided to go to the gym, he was not there (laughs).
The pool is a bit small and it’s clean. I don’t know how deep it is since I didn’t attempt to dip in There’s something about it that makes me disappointed and disgusted but I don’t know which it is exactly.

Rating: 4.3 / 5

As I mentioned above, I had a mixed feeling during and after my stay at Golden Phoenix Hotel Manila. Since I am not used to a hotel and also a condominium, I fell like the exclusivity somehow lost it. I hope that the hotel will do something about the noises of the staffs. If you would ask me if I would recommend staying at this hotel, yes. It’s worth the try.