Price Increases

[Mr Lee]

One thing that I have found to be a problem is my wife's new last name, it gives her away as being married to a Kano as soon as she tells them her name......The better hotels ask right away as soon as you call........ I have found that telling them right up front that she is calling from whatever town near them within the Philippines helps to let them know she is a local and usually gets us the Filipino rate..... ie, When wanting to stay in Makati, she tells them we are in and live in a town in Manila even if we are in Cebu, and do they have a room.I actually think there are three rates, the Kano rate, the rich Filipino rate and then the average Filipino rate and our name makes it hard to get the average Filipino rate most times IMO.

[tropicalwaste]

Never really had an issue with pricing.. just poor hygiene and service in some of the resorts.. when I was touring last year with the airsoft team we stopped in a place that was P40 a night ok ants were huge one of the airsoft guys opened his window in his room and it fell onto the beach hut roof but cant complain for the money as everywhere was fully booked (over 200 airsoft players + families in the area). Moral of the story was be careful who does your booking for you as well :P I dont mind roughing it anyway bit of a change of scenery..Not sure what is going on with the prices though at the moment has tourism figures dropped this year with the recession? Because like most things it may be defying logic. Instead of decreasing prices to increase numbers and try to sell more add on services they are likely to just hike up the prices and have even less.. There is a resort in San Fernando with imported sand from Bohol we went to for the day thought it would be nice to hire a beach hut and have a BBQ. They had got rid of all the beach huts and requested a minimum room purchase.. so I thought ok we are here for the day can relax shower etc. Minimum room price was $300 (yes they quoted brochure prices in dollars). At which point we decided to head off somewhere else.. what baffled me was the attitude as if it was normal and at the same time I looked round the resort and there was not one customer to be seen. So maybe the $300 could have been justified for the day stay as we could have had 20 staff running around after us

[sjp52]

I can,t figure out some of these so called business people here that have hotels. I was in Cebu and called a place in Moalboal and got a price of 1000 pesos per night. So we took the bus down there and when we got to the hotel they wanted 1500. There was no one staying at the hotel. I said i want the price I was quoted or I will just go down the road and stay some where else and they said thats fine and I did. The only thing that bothered me was it was a long way from the highway and a terrible bumpy road.

[tropicalwaste]

I can,t figure out some of these so called business people here that have hotels. I was in Cebu and called a place in Moalboal and got a price of 1000 pesos per night. So we took the bus down there and when we got to the hotel they wanted 1500. There was no one staying at the hotel. I said i want the price I was quoted or I will just go down the road and stay some where else and they said thats fine and I did. The only thing that bothered me was it was a long way from the highway and a terrible bumpy road.

Thing is I always contact the owners of the resorts afterwards if the stay is good or bad and update them as often they are out of the country. I stopped in a place in San Remigo last year which was a nice enough place but the rooms were filthy and aircon had been altered to stop you adjusting the temperature as they were more on a whisper than a breeze. We woke up in the morning to find there was no water so I thought I would take a dip in the pool instead as I needed to go out.. all fine.. but later on that day April and her cousin came up to us and said they got charged P100 each for using the pool yet as they explained to the people at the resort the reason was there was NO WATER in the rooms no positive response was given as its a basic service.. (The rooms were P1500 a night and we had booked about 5 of the rooms) so I emailed the doctor owner and wrote a review on the place. I have been invited back as they have rectified the problems. So will see next time im in the area. I think a lot of the resorts stay empty down to staff not wanting to get off their ass and do theyre job so they try to put off people coming..