Hotel Review ｜ SureStay Plus ★★★★★
The SureStay Plus By Best Western should have been a home run. It has a lot of good things going for it. The location is not bad. It’s just a few blocks south of Walking Street, so almost smack in the middle of town. It’s on a smaller side street, so it’s not as noisy. The price is within reason. It also has fairly good amenities, including a pool.
Unfortunately, this hotel suffered from the same disease that afflict many other locally run business; being woefully mismanaged as well as poorly maintained. These two things feed off each other and create a vicious cycle.
How One Poor Decision Can Be Ruinous
I arrived at the Surestay after a flight a bus ride from Manila, a bit past 1am. I wanted a shower and solid 8 hours as I had planned to rent a motorbike the next morning and do some exploring. Everything started fine. The show was ok. Hot water, check. Pressure ok. The bathroom was a total glass partition on one side of the room with frosted glass, which I’m not a fan of, but it’s not a make or break feature for me. There was also a surprising amount of street noise considering we’re down a side street, but nothing my white noise app couldn’t fix. Got the bed ready, laid out my clothes for the next day, and went around the room turning off the lights. Well, that’s odd. I can’t find the light switch to the bathroom. When I entered the room, the bellhop who brought my bag turned on all the lights before I entered. No bother, I called down to the front desk to ask where the light switch was located. That is when I was informed of one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.
There is no light switch! WTF?!?
The bathroom lights were set by a motion sensor. Ideally, the light would trigger when a person enters and turn off once the lights stopped detecting motion after a small amount of time. In theory this seems like an OK idea, but in reality it is a painfully stupid idea. Even if they worked perfectly, which spoiler alert… they didn’t, it doesn’t take into account that there might be times when you don’t want the light to come on.
For example, maybe your partner is sleeping and the blinding light from the glass bathroom will probably wake them up. Or perhaps you’re a cheap hotel chain, like Best Western, and you buy garbage Chinese sensor that probably never worked right.
How SureStay Plus Dealt With Issues; Part I
After sending some staff up to the room, he told me the sensor could be blocked with some paper, which would have left me with no light to take a shower or shave with.
To say the least, I was not happy. The staff decided to upgrade my room. I packed up everything and moved to another floor on the opposite of the hotel. This room wasn’t facing the road, so it was very quite. That was nice. However, the sensor in this bathroom was also broken. This time instead of turning on and remaining on, this light would flash on and immediately turn off. It would do this over and over again. It was kind of like a strobe light. This was a clear downgrade to the situation.
How SureStay Plus Dealt With Issues; Part II
There were no other vacant rooms left in the hotel, so my option was to have the staff paper over the sensor. Not the end of the world, but for a room that’s $70 a night in the Philippines this was a big disappointment. It wasn’t just that though. Many things in the room were poorly maintained. When they painted, it was clearly a second rate job. You wouldn’t have needed to be house painter through the summers during college to realize that because they also spilt paint on the floor. The wall mount for the TV was also busted. Again, these are a bunch of small things, but they add up. This was on level with Red Planet, which less than a third the price.
After speaking with the manager in the morning, he gave me tickets for complementary breakfast. I thought this was a nice jester and that would have softened my outlook towards the hotel. However, the very next morning, after ordering my breakfast, the front desk staff approached me and told me they would NOT honor the gratis breakfast tickets because my reservation didn’t have that included. Flabbergasted I explained that the manager had given me the breakfast coupons because of the condition of my room but they weren’t having it.
I did see the manager one last time, which is when I told him what happened. He listened and then just shrugged. I said at this point I would asking for a full refund from Agoda on my stay. He didn’t say anything. Just shrugged again. That’s how we left it. I tried not to bother staff for anything for the rest of my stay. Really, I just wanted to get the hell out of there.
I did end up getting a full, 100% refund from Agoda. It took a few months and they dragged their feet on the matter, but I told them I wouldn’t be going away. I think at that point they were sick of hearing from and it made more sense to pay to go away.
Would I Stay Again at SureStay Plus?
No, I wouldn’t stay again here again. I might be giving all Best Westerns a wide birth from this point forward, especially in the Philippines. I have no problem with budget rooms in developing countries, but they need to be priced as such. Anything above $30 for this room and you’ll be feeling taken advantage of.
Need more information about the Philippines?
Read our full write up on Angeles City HERE.
Mill over our full write up on Manila HERE.
Check out our full write up on Cebu HERE.
Look at our full write up on Laoag HERE.
View our full write up on Vigan HERE.
Contact & General Information
Price: $70-100; Higher Than Average
Website: SureStay Plus (official website)
Location: Google
