For our fifth year wedding anniversary, Cathy and I enjoyed a gone-too-fast overnight stay at The Boutique Hotel in Tagaytay. The last time we enjoyed Tagaytay accommodations was two years ago, when we spent an absolutely idyllic third-year anniversary evening at the Discovery Country Suites, also along the National Highway in Tagaytay.
I discovered The Boutique Hotel, a Tagaytay bed-and-breakfast, on TripAdvisor. It got stunning reviews, all of them from couples who said the seven rooms at The Boutique were cozy and romantic. After finding several blog entries and press releases praising the accommodations of The Boutique, I decided to book a room there for our anniversary.
Here are the positives:
- The Boutique’s emphasis is on reconnection between two people. Based on everything I’d read, The Boutique is a premium hotel not meant for families or barkadas. Sure enough, everything is geared towards reconnection, from the room design to the amenities, from the bath facilities to the breakfast-in-bed options. It’s sensual, it’s textile, and it’s intimate.
- The homemade bath goodies were delightful. The Boutique experience starts with a trip to the The Pamper Me room, a cozy nook behind the front desk filled with homemade scents and goodies designed to contribute to the overall experience. The couple gets to select room fragrances, shampoo and conditioner, body lotion, and soaps in several fragrances, including peppermint, lemon, and rose. Lavender was our choice of fragrance for the room and Cathy’s soap; I chose an invigorating rosemary and tea tree soap; we also selected rich and comforting milk and honey for our shampoo, conditioner, and lotion.
- The room was lovely. We booked the I Surrender guest room, which was right beside the front desk. The amenities inside I Surrender certainly made our stay more enjoyable. The room has a relatively private patio with its own hammock, large rattan love chair, leather-upholstered divan, and table. The Samsung plasma television and the corresponding sound system was arguably the best of all the local hotels at which we’ve stayed. (We watched our own copies of “The Holiday†and “Barbra: The Concert,†as well as the hotel’s copy of “Transformers.†Their sound system is quite good for musical DVDs.) We loved the king-sized bed, the abundant number of pillows, and the quality of the mattress.
- The food at The Boutique was also quite good. Their Hawaiian Bar-B-Cue restaurant served a delectable baby back ribs – arguably second-best we’ve tried, after Racks – notable for its tenderness and flavour. We also had a very interesting appetizer of French fries and spam served julienne, served with caramelized onions and a tart-sweet pineapple-laced sauce. At night, we were served hot chocolate with churros, a lovely little counterpoint to the Discovery Country Suites’ tradition of milk and cookies.
- The breakfast-in-bed was inspired. I chose their Hawaiian breakfast, which featured homemade breads, marmalades, two Hawaiian burger patties, and a large Spanish omelette; Cathy selected the continental breakfast, which included mini-pancakes, hard-boiled eggs, and a fruit plate. A choice of one cold and one hot beverage each found us choosing a cappuccino, a hot chocolate with marshmallows, and two pink guava juices. There was also a mini-bar, and the prices weren’t half-bad.
- The view was breathtaking. Our patio opened onto the back of the hotel, which featured a lovely view of the mountainside. We got some awesome sky shots and some terrific mountain shots. The rooms on the second floor, however, probably had a better view.
- In general, front-desk service was good. From calling about the hotel to booking to in-room service, the service was generally good. We asked for a pillow turndown while having dinner; the staff replaced the sheets. Talk about going the extra mile.
Here are the negatives, coming from nitpicky me:
- Getting information about The Boutique – and booking – can be tough. The Boutique doesn’t have an official website, so most of the information I needed on the hotel, I gleaned from the Web. You don’t know what makes each of its seven rooms special; without much information, one can be at a loss as regards which room to book and what amenities are available in each room (for example, we didn’t know whether or not I Surrender came with a refrigerator, and I brought refrigerate-only caviar to enjoy with Cathy).
- Booking can also be tough. Potential guests in the Philippines looking to book rooms at The Boutique on their own may find the booking experience easier than those based abroad. Why? This Tagaytay hotel confirms bookings with minimum PHP2500/night deposits into its bank account. (To Tagaytay hotels’ detriment, though, the same can be said for Sonia’s Garden’s Bed and Breakfast, although Discovery Country Suites makes life a little easier by at least taking my credit card number as booking guarantee.)
- White isn’t the best look for long-term maintenance. At night, The Boutique looks absolutely lovely; in the glorious Tagaytay sun, however, the flaws of the chic white of The Boutique, i.e. its propensity to get dirty, can be seen in stark reality. The dark streaks left by rain can mar The Boutique’s façade; inside, our patio walls were just as dingy.
- The rooms, surprisingly enough, aren’t that private. Book a second-floor room, if you can. Since the I Surrender guest room is on the first floor – and right beside the kitchen! – you can get a little concerned about privacy because you can hear voices through the bathroom walls and see sunshine shadows on the patio curtains of people walking by. The second-floor rooms have their own concerns, too, though; apparently, guests on the ground floor can see into their baths.
- There may be a couple of cleanliness issues. There was a foldable wooden table underneath our bed for the breakfast-in-bed; when I took it out to examine it, underneath it were dried-up rose petals and little black pellets I realized were mouse droppings, indicating the floor underneath the bed mayn’t have been swept prior to our check-in. The next morning, we awoke to find said culprit mouse had helped itself to our leftover churros, as well as the peanuts and chocolate in our mini-bar.
Despite these negatives, overall, we found our stay at The Boutique a pleasant one. The in-room amenities, homemade bath products, and food were the highlights of our stay; the discomfiting thought of people seeing or overhearing us, as well as the rather dirty walls of the outside façade, were the low points.
Photos here.
