Crimson Resort and Spa, Mactan

PROs and CONs about Crimson Resort & Spa

You should decide for yourself if you can overcome the CONs because that'll decide how it will affect your vacation.
For us, we enjoyed our overall stay at Crimson but wouldn't be a top choice for us to come back here in comparison to our overall experience. For the price that they charge, we expect perfection but Crimson was good and not great.

PROs
1. Excellent service - Most hotel staff are friendly, accommodating, polite and responsive. We have a 1 year old baby with us and the staff at Saffron purée fruits for our baby daily and were friendly to our family. At Crimzone kid zone where our baby play - the staff were very nice to our baby.
2. For a hotel, though it's very expensive, the food at Saffron and Tempo restaurants were excellent.
3. New hotel with nice relaxing design and it has an Impressive pool.
4. Bed was comfortable and they have nice linens.
5. Free play area for family traveling with kids and it has a clinic in case you get ill during your vacation.
6. Hotel security is very good. Someone patrols the area and if you take a cab, the TAG/plate number is written so the hotel can track it when needed.

CONs
1. Expensive in comparable to other hotels in Cebu-Mactan area. Examples: Breakfast buffet is priced at 30 US Dollar per person before tax & service charge and 1 hour massage is priced at approximately 100 USD.
2. The beach portion of this hotel is a DISAPPOINTMENT. It's a very nice hotel but don't book here if you are looking to spend your vacation in a nice tropical beach. The beach portion is very small, very rocky and the water is nowhere close to Boracay and definitely not Palawan.
3. Not walking distance to any mall, restaurants or tourist attractions which means you either have to eat in the restaurants within the hotel or take a taxi/shuttle to eat out. Note also, if the concierge personnel see you bring food inside, they can charge you a "corking" fee. This was not disclosed to us during check in so be aware.
4. Not handicap friendly hotel - if you are in a wheelchair- don't book here. The architectural design is not handicap friendly. For one, all rooms I saw have steps and no ramps, not every stairs has ramps next to it and if there is a ramp, it is not within the building, it is outdoor without awning/roof so when it rains, the poor person in the wheelchair will be soaking wet.
5. Free WiFi is extremely slow. No kidding, it'll take 15-30 mins before Facebook News Feed updates. It's impossible to do video chat with the latency of the Internet connection. There's no WiFi in certain portion of the resort too.
6. No free breakfast was given to us but they gave a free breakfast to the friend that we referred to the hotel. We booked for 7 nights and we were told it doesn't come with complimentary breakfast but when our friend checked in for just 1 night we heard they were offered a free breakfast. We complained about this but no one wants to offer the same deal for us knowing we stayed longer than our friend and we are the one who referred this hotel. Because of this, I am passionate to write a review at every website about this unfair treatment and warn everyone to ask for complimentary breakfast! If you are traveling with Filipino citizen, book the reservation under that person as local rates may save you money.

Unique Quality: It's a new hotel with mostly very friendly staff.