|
Post by EXO on Dec 21, 2017 11:29:38 GMT 8
The Corregidor Inn, which has been closed for more than a year (just long enough to allow memories of it to mellow into nostalgia). is now being completed. Its not all completed yet, so the photographs which are below are prior to them getting the decorators in. At least, we hope they are going to get some decorators in. A little birdie tells me that I'm not the only person who has had mixed feelings about the Corregidor Inn, and the way it has been managed and morphed through the years. They used to have a bad habit of ignoring your reservations when they could take a block booking of the entire place. I've been going there more or less annually for about twenty years. (Since their chef departed, they never could toast bread properly.) For several years I have been commenting that the Inn needed to be reinvented, because its management had allowed it to become tired. It sure had a quirky and lovable character, though. Resorts, and with them resort hotels, have a life-cycle, and they need to reinvent themselves when they start approaching the end of their cycle. This is not the reinvention I was hoping for. I've started this thread into an area of our board where people can make a post without being members, so that we can find out what they really think. So you should be able to post anonymously.
Of course, criticism (constructive or otherwise) makes no difference to the Corregidor Inn, for they are a monopoly. Besides, it's clear already that they have already decided to take it to a different market, and that the market is not us. I’d kind of hoped Sun Cruises would at least have been clever with with a heritage décor, but they weren’t. I don’t even like the look of it, sorry. It is what I would call “modern minimalist sterile”, which is fine for generic, characterless, antiseptic apartments but not for a holiday resort hotel. I am told the overnight rate is 4,500 peso - which is about three times what it might be had for prior to the refurbishment. Recently, I was on business in Phnom Penh and was staying at a boutique hotel at US$45 a night. Life warns us generally to give anything named "boutique" a wide swerve, but the hotel was bloody brilliant, well maintained, luxurious, fantastic cleanliness, great facilities, exemplary room service etc - and at less than half the price. Corregidor Inn mustn't be relying upon "word of mouth" to redevelop their market. The photos are hosted and posted by permission. Remember the wooden the staircase railing? Mahogany I assume. It is now painted white.
|
|
|
Post by beirutvet on Dec 22, 2017 1:08:05 GMT 8
EXO
You are correct, sir. The old place did have a "quirky and lovable character". That is what endeared it to my heart so much. And I also agree that this was not the reinvention that I had hoped for either.
That main hallway on the second level is a stunning disappointment. I remember it having a kind of french colonial look and now just looks painted over, just like that magnificent mahogany staircase that now has a gleaming white coat of paint that I am sure will show every bit of dirt that is laid on it,,, and seldom cleaned.
I was happy to see the patio in the dining room looked relatively untouched and retained the old style railing though they replaced that with the clear glass railing on the north side. What was the purpose in changing just that portion of the railing? What ever they were going for I feel it has fallen flat.
I am hoping that you are also correct about the decorators imminent arrival. Perhaps that will put some of the old charm back into the place and it won't look so sterile. The decor as is would be a perfect antiseptic fit for any hospital that I would be unfortunate enough to have to visit, not a resort hotel and certainly not one on such a one of a kind and historic piece of real estate as this. Disappointment abounds.
At least with that brand new equipment in the kitchen, perhaps we can at least enjoy some decent toast at breakfast.
|
|
|
Post by EXO on Dec 22, 2017 6:32:07 GMT 8
Beirut-vet,
You capture my view beyond simple agreement. There is no shortage of superior architectural talent in Manila, and no shortage of Heritage charm available as the means to give a place a special or memorable ambience. The opportunity to refurbish the Inn was an opportunity too important to squander. The character of the Inn informs visitors to Corregidor of the primacy of heritage and remembrance, or at least it should have, or might have done. It should have set the tone for the overnight visitors. "Come to Corregidor and enjoy our nineteenth century ambience" is what they might have said. But what have we got? An architectural hodge-pudge of conflicted tropical clinicality, and modern style licks. One of our group, he might not appreciate my mentioning his name in the context of being an architectural critic of this refurbishment, used the word QUIRKY when recalling the old Inn. It certainly was all of that, quirky, and it was a loveable, nostalgic quirkiness indeed. It welcomed one in, embracing us with that other world charm. So what do we have today?
A charm bypass, so far.
It has been said that, in military-historical fields, the Philippines in WWII was "the place where good planning comes to die". That can be said of a lot of places, though, to be fair. Yet even the Japanese author/propagandist Kazumaro Uno, who wrote about the American loss of Corregidor, termed it an "Isle of Delusion." He was lording it over the Americans, of course. 16 February 1945 would come, soon enough. Perhaps the more things change, the more they DO remain the same. None of us are immune.
|
|
|
Post by cbuehler on Dec 22, 2017 10:45:06 GMT 8
Isle of Delusion it has indeed become. None of this is surprising and I suppose inevitable as time erases what Corregidor once was. After all, Filipinos do not visit the Island and it's survival depends on foreign tourists, to which end the Corregidor Inn as it is; modern minimalist that is all the rage in the PI...
CB
|
|