99.9% of our guests have a great time here. A very small minority are miserable. If any of the following are very important to you or describe your situation, please book in another hotel:
- Beach dimensions. Our open-sea beachfront is 88 meters long, compared with 200 meters or so for typical hotels around the world of this size. There is no adjacent beach either; ours is a separate cove. However, the waters are exceptionally clear, and there are living reefs and a diving wall very close to shore. Conscious that we are beach-challenged, we built extensive internal lagoons plus four freshwater swimming pools of varying designs. Because of the lagoons, a large percentage of our rooms enjoy an expansive view of water, and most of our rooms are closer to the action compared with the typical resort. The Rooms section on this website clearly discloses what kind of view and proximity to beach, lagoon, or swimming pool you can expect from each room.
- Artificiality. Plantation Bay is a man-made environment. The lagoons have a cement floor and occasionally need to be drained for cleaning. The waterfall is powered by pumps. Much “rockwork” is cement or plastic. Most guests quickly forget these details, but some people just can’t get over them. On the other hand, our lagoons are a lot cleaner and safer than a real seawater lagoon would be.
- Nature-ality. Plantation Bay is laid out like a village. This means walking in open air, or taking a golf cart. Sometimes the sun is hot, and sometimes you may get wet. Sometimes the carts are slow. There are mosquitoes in the air, but also sometimes the scent of jasmine. We think this is much more interesting than walking down long corridors that look and smell the same as those in midtown city hotels, but not everyone agrees.
- Typical hotel prices and policies. Our beer costs P 220 (about $4); laundry for a shirt is P 230 (about $4). Full buffet breakfast is P 1200 (about $21); an ala carte American breakfast is P 480 (about $8). We do not insult your intelligence by claiming to offer “free” breakfast; rather, we give each guest the option, every morning, to have the buffet, the ala carte, whatever, and to pay only for what was consumed. Still, some guests have complained about our prices (honestly, we can’t figure out what their frame of reference is). Click here to see illustrative costs of food and various services in the hotel. There have also been a few guests who, having paid $160 for one room, felt entitled to invite all their local relatives to come swim, and became angry when we disagreed. Click here for our policies on room occupancy, bringing in food, and friends and visitors.
- Friendly Reminder. We are not like other Filipinos. Plantation Bay is one of the very few hotels in the world that proactively and strictly defends our guests’ right to peace and quiet (don’t you wish airlines, airports, restaurants, and other public venues would do the same?)Audible electronics and prolonged tele-conversations are not permitted in our restaurants. Electronics are prohibited altogether inside the Spa, without exception. Parents with children are expected to ensure that they do not disturb others; and if you are unable to control your infants and children, you may be asked to leave a facility or even the hotel.If this seems “fascist” to you, please try another hotel. We WILL enforce these principles, because we firmly believe that the vast majority of our guests will have a much more enjoyable holiday if we do so. For every guest who argues that he should be free to disturb others as much as he likes, we have a hundred who are ecstatic that, finally, someone is willing to speak up against incivility and discourtesy. And that’s how we can have a resort that is family-friendly, couples-friendly, corporate-friendly, singles-friendly, and LGBTQ-friendly, all at the same time.