My recent 10 Day Colombia Itinerary wrapped up in Medellín. While visiting this large Colombian city, I stayed at the Manila Hotel Boutique (view their website here). During the Bogotá and Cartagena portions of the trip, I had stayed in larger hotels. Therefore, a stay in a boutique hotel was a nice change of pace. The Manila Hotel Boutique fit this need and had a prime location in the middle of the El Poblado neighborhood. Read on for the full review of the Manila Hotel Boutique.
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Location
Medellín (like Bogotá) is a very large city. Attractions tend to be spread out, but unlike any other Colombian city it has a metro. For this reason, most areas are fairly accessible, and getting from one side of the city to the other doesn’t take long. With that being said, the best places to stay in Medellín are either El Poblado or Laureles. Laureles is a smaller and more intimate neighborhood. It is closer to most of the historical sights but has fewer restaurants, cafés, and bars in the neighborhood. El Poblado is a larger neighborhood with more activities and restaurants. This is where Manila Hotel Boutique is located.
The El Poblado neighborhood is well known for having a variety of nice restaurants and hotels that attract tourists. It also has a reputation for being a more upscale neighborhood for locals and is very safe. With that being said, it has developed a popular nightlife scene for locals and tourists alike.
Guest Rooms
The Manila Hotel Boutique offers two different types of guest rooms: double and deluxe. A double room is the base room type and features a double bed. The deluxe rooms offer a queen bed, but otherwise, the rooms are mostly the same. The whole hotel only has twenty rooms, so there is actually very little variation overall in the room offerings. The price difference between the rooms is fairly negligible at 10,000 COP per night ($2.50/night). Despite this, I opted for the double room during our trip. I was able to get a discount by booking this through a third-party booking site, and the deluxe room wasn’t being offered on the site. Therefore, what follows is a review of the double room.
Bathroom
Upon stepping into the rooms, guests will notice the industrial construction and design aesthetics. Everything is black or corrugated metal, exposed brick/block & concrete walls, large glass windows, and industrial fixtures. These industrial aesthetics carry into the bathroom as well. The bathroom is a completely separate room from the rest of the guest room.
The bathroom features a single sink, a toilet, and a large walk-in shower. Despite the shower being large, the bathroom is fairly small overall. The sink barely clears the door into the bathroom. This means that anyone standing at the sinks has to move out of the way for the door to open. The countertop space at the sink is also fairly small. Thankfully, there is a good amount of shelf space under the sink for storage, but there just isn’t much room for storage on top.
As mentioned earlier, the shower is a nice size. The high ceilings in the bathroom and bedroom mean that the shower head was placed fairly high to accommodate taller guests. The completely tiled and glass shower was a modern feature in an otherwise mostly industrial room/bathroom. Despite being a boutique hotel, it provided branded toiletries including multiple bars of soap, shampoo, conditioner, and body wash (labeled “body crème”).
Bedroom
Continuing the aesthetic from the bathroom, the bedroom also has industrial decorations. The double or queen bed anchors the room. The vast majority of the rooms have large windows opposite the bed that look out onto the streets outside. There are sliding shades that do a good job of blocking out the light when drawn across the windows. However, the windows and shades don’t do a great job of blocking out the sound. While the hotel isn’t on a terribly busy street, Colombians love their motorbikes. These motorbikes are loud and can easily be heard through these windows. While you could get used to this, the noise was probably one of the largest downsides to the experience.
Around the bedroom, there was one nightstand, a simple open wardrobe, a desk and chair, and a wall-mounted television. The furniture was simple yet functional. The wardrobe has some space for hanging clothes and a few shelves that clothes or one suitcase could be placed on. However, there wasn’t enough shelf space for two suitcases. Therefore, one of our suitcases was placed on the floor for the four nights we stayed here. The desk had enough room for a laptop, but not much else. This was best used as an occasional place to sit, but I wouldn’t recommend it for any amount of longer work. Finally, the television was internet-enabled only. No local channels were available. Therefore, you needed to log into your own accounts on services like Netflix or Amazon. Alternately, you could pull up shows/videos on phones or computers and cast it to the television with Chromecast.
Breakfast/Restaurant
Breakfast at the ground floor restaurant is included with all rooms. The breakfast is seated and has a set menu. There are a few options that allow some customization and variety day-to-day. Each person gets their choice of a hot beverage, cold beverage, eggs, cheese, fruit, and a bakery item with jam. The hot beverage options were coffee or hot chocolate. For cold beverages, orange juice and water were offered. Eggs were offered as fried or scrambled. The scrambled eggs could be served plain or with your choice of tomato, onions, and ham. Finally, a croissant, toast, or an arepa were offered as the bakery item. While the menu was somewhat limited, the food preparation and quality were good. Generally, the food was also prepared and served quickly. Breakfast was available each day from 7:00 AM to 10:30 AM (except on the weekend when it was served until 11:00 AM).
In addition to breakfast, the restaurant served food all day. The menu consists primarily of South American food. The specials were often different varieties of tacos. A word of warning, the restaurant doesn’t publish hours of operation and tends to close when they feel like closing. One evening it rained, and we were not wanting to leave the hotel. Therefore, we thought we could go to the downstairs restaurants. However, to our dissatisfaction, the restaurant had been closed early. The restaurant does offer room service while it is open; however, the included breakfast can’t be taken via room service.
Amenities
As the Manila Hotel Boutique is a small hotel, it didn’t offer too many amenities to its guests. Upon check-in, guests are provided a link to a list of guest services. Most services are available via a WhatsApp number. These services include requesting items like irons, hairdryers, and sewing kits. The minibar is also available via this way (although this just seems like room service to me). The hotel offers access to their Netflix account (subject to availability) if you don’t have one.
Beyond the food, beverage, and additional room items, there aren’t many amenities. The property doesn’t offer a gym or pool or anything like that. The property does have a rooftop space. During the day, this is set up as a working space for guests. During the afternoon and evening, it transforms into a rooftop bar and dining location.
In-room amenities are also limited, there isn’t a minifridge, snack bar, or coffee maker. Most rooms do have an in-room safe. However, the safe in my room was missing batteries and thus was inoperable during my stay.
Cost
As with most Colombian hotels, they are cheap by US standards. Boutique hotels are also typically cheaper than other hotels due to their smaller size and lack of guest amenities. At the time of writing and when I stayed, the rates were not variable based on the date. The double room is 189,000 COP per night, while the deluxe room is 199,000 COP per night. This works out to be ~$50/night or $53/night depending on the room type.
As the Manila Hotel Boutique is an independent hotel, there isn’t a rewards program that can be used to book a free night. If you are looking to save some money on the stay, the only real options are to go through a cashback site and use a third-party booking platform. Booking through a cashback site like booking.com can save an additional ~6% on the room rate.
Bottom Line
At the end of the day, the Manila Hotel Boutique was a nice hotel. It covered the needs of a safe and comfortable place to sleep. The boutique nature of the hotel meant that you were able to stay in a smaller neighborhood and explore more of the local shops, cafés, and restaurants. The largest downside of the hotel was the street noise which was very hard to escape (especially at night). While the ~$50/night price is nearly unbeatable, I would be tempted to pay a little more in the future to avoid the street noise. However, if the price is a chief consideration for you, it will be hard to beat the Manila Hotel Boutique.
