From Asia: Philippines: Angeles City: Porker's Guide to Angeles City Hotels

SWISS CHALET: A buddy stayed here in April, and the rooms are brand new and quite large and nice, and obviously the location is excellent if you're planning to do heavy barhopping on Fields. In the Apartelle Royal mode, though, they're more like serviced apartments, in that there are few amenities like a pool and the 'front desk' is inside Blackjack's Restaurant, which isn't 24 hours. One difference from Apartelle Royal, though, is that there are room phones and there is a restaurant downstairs with a very good reputation. The staff was quite friendly to me as a visitor, the room clean which indicated good maid service.

The furniture/decorations at Swiss Chalet may be the nicest of all the hotels on this list. All rooms have in-room safes and brand new quiet air-con, good-sized TV.The rooms are priced at 1250 and 1450 pesos, and unfortunately I don't know which priced room my friend had. Even at 1450 pesos, however, he got a VERY nice room for the money.

Recommendation: Like Apartelle Royal, if you can live without a pool and a ton of staff being at your beck and call, you can get an extremely nice room for your money, maybe the best value in AC.

I used this hotel for a second room two nights in a row and was very impressed. I had to use an additional room because the girls that work at Central Park adore my girlfriend and would rat me out. I had to be incognito and have the girl meet me in the lobby of the hotel so noone would see.

As for the hotel, the rooms have good furniture that looks sort of like refurbished antique Oriental furniture. The air con is excellent and the room gets cold in about 10 minutes. Fairly large bathroom, queen sized bed and flat screen television with cable. The rooms were decent sized and were available for 1,350 pisos(same price as Central Park). There is room service from their restaurant downstairs, although it specialized in European food. The entire lobby is a restaurant and there is nowhere for your guests to sit if they are waiting for you. There are also 3 very hot looking girls that work there in the evening. The price for the food is expensive by AC standards but cheap compared to the US. I would put this up with Apartelle Royale and Central Park for overall value.

In a promo email I got today, Swiss Chalet is claiming they have free Wi-fi hotspots throughout the hotel and restaurant. Their 10 additional built from the ground up brand new rooms are also due to be ready in early August. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Swiss Chalet offers excellent room quality for not a lot of money in a terrific location in AC. One of these days maybe I'll even stay there!

Here is their website, one of my buddies confirmed they now have wi-fi hotspots throughout. But availability of rooms is still low.

http://www.swisschaletph.com/en/hintro.htm

(Message edited by merlin on August 20, 2005)

Stayed at the Swiss Chalet for the second time on my last trip at the end of July. I like the hotel for it's price, location, decent restaurant, wireless internet and friendly staff.

However, there was a fly in the ointment on this trip. Jackhammer noise from the construction of the new condos next door woke me up on a couple of occasions during the morning hours. I'm usually an early riser, so this normally may not have bothered me. However, on this trip, for whatever reason, I was dragging-ass tired the entire time. In fact, a couple of times I fell asleep on returning to the hotel BEFORE laying the wood to the BF. (Don't worry, on each occasion the lost time was eventually made up for.)

I usually recommend the Swiss Chalet for those who, like me, don't need a pool. However, until the construction of the condos is completed, I think I'd go somewhere else.

As always, YMMV,

EA

I FINALLY stayed here myself this trip, and liked the rooms a lot. I got a break in that construction was at a lull (it will NOT be that way for long!), but there was a new noise pollution: The little outdoor cafe on the corner got a videoke machine 2 weeks ago and have had it running 24x7 since! Any room facing the Central Park side is gonna have that noise bledding into the room, and it is as annoying as the karaoke noise on the top floors of Sparks Hotel in Jakarta.

Wireless internet speed was pretty good at Swiss Chalet. I paid 1580 pesos for a room a step up from the standard room, which I think was 1480.