Jun 11 2008
Golden Prince Hotel (Cebu City)
A prince is stately and gold is one of the most expensive metals, as is. Putting the two together may conjure an image of something expensive and stately, but as they say, never judge a book by its cover, er, name?. The Golden Prince Hotel is not one of the more expensive hotel in Cebu City, although it’s also not the most grand like, say, Shangri-La Mactan.
The room rates are reasonable. For a group of 11, we booked two Studio Suites — one with a bathtub (P2,400) and the other without a bath tub (P2,150), with both rates inclusive of breakfast for two. Of course, you won’t mind the difference of a few hundred pesos if you know that your young one enjoys splashing in a tub (yes, I know that you could do that in swimming pools or in the beach, but those places will be the subject of other posts).
We didn’t have to pay for the little ones because children under 12 years old are free of charge. We realized later on that we should have chosen a 2-bedroom suite (P4,950) so that the group could stay in one place (the 1-bedroom suite is P3,750, and just in case you’re wondering, the standard room is P1,450).
The reason I said that it’s reasonable is not because it’s a relatively new hotel (so the fixtures and equipment are still new), or that it has ready internet access (for those blog addicts, but you’d rather use your cellphone as a modem because the rate is P50 per hour), or that it has a reasonably good service crew, or that it’s very near a hospital (it’s a stone’s throw from Perpetual Soccour Hospital).
It’s reasonable considering that it’s just around 5 minutes of leisurely walk to Ayala Center Cebu (consisting of Glorietta-style mall at the core of the business district, also known as the Cebu Business Park; this photo of Ayala Mall is from the 6th floor of Golden Prince Hotel).
It’s less expensive (although definitely less stately) than Marriott Hotel, which is just behind the Ayala mall. The Golden Prince Hotel is also nearer to the Ayala mall than Waterfront Hotel-Lahug (again, Waterfront is way stately than the Golden Prince, but this should not prevent your young one from acting like a prince =).
Just in case the taxi driver doesn’t know where the Golden Prince is, tell them it’s just in front of Ayala-Cebu. If the driver still can’t get it, ask him to drive you to the corner of Acacia Street and Archbishop Reyes Avenue (Barangay Camputhaw, which is also the same barangay where UP-Cebu is located). If you want to ask for directions from the hotel staff (or you want to make reservations), the contact numbers are 032-233-8660 and 032-412-8660. You could also reserve through email — reservations@goldenprincehotel.com (there’s supposed to be a Golden Prince Hotel website, but it’s offline as of this writing).