Citrine Tourist Travel Lodge

The staff were helpful throughout, including finding us transportation early in the morning and giving recommendations. You do need to negotiate the price, as you do everywhere else, but I thought the quality was good for what it cost. The hotel was clean, and the room was modest but fairly new, with air conditioning, a fan, and a small balcony. The shower water isn’t hot because they use a solar panel system, though with the local temperatures, room-temperature water was pleasant enough.

The staff were polite, and there’s free coffee, but the stay didn’t feel worth the money. The room looked nice and fairly new when we arrived, and the bathroom was spacious and clean. Still, there was an unbearable damp smell. We had to keep the air conditioning on to bear it, but then couldn’t sleep. There’s no window facing outside, which made the room feel claustrophobic on top of the awful smell. The Wi-Fi was almost nonexistent. We asked for the password and were told it only works between midnight and 6 am, and even then, not reliably.

The room was nice, the air conditioning worked well, the hot water was good, and the staff were friendly. But there were lots of ants and mosquitoes, and my husband complained about his bites. It’s far from town.

We arrived late in the afternoon for a two-night stay and had booked a one-day tour for the next day. It was cancelled because of the typhoon, but the morning receptionist didn’t tell us until we came downstairs ready to leave. She hadn’t knocked or otherwise let us know. She was just on her phone. We could have avoided getting up so early and showering in very cold water if she’d told us sooner. We’d rented a car from Puerto Princesa, so we could still drive around without getting soaked in the rain, but there wasn’t much to do on the island. The island and nature tours were impossible during the typhoon. The hotel internet didn’t work at all. The only bar in El Nido with live music played reggae, so we decided to return to Puerto Princesa instead. We asked for the money back for the one-day room rental, but they never returned a single peso or even said sorry. The rooms are small, the Wi-Fi doesn’t work, and there’s no hot shower. The receptionist was unprofessional. Don’t book this hotel.