Best Hotels in Manila | Book Around the Traffic, Not the View
In most cities the hotel decision is about the neighbourhood. In Manila it is about which terminal you are flying out of, because the traffic between them is the single largest variable in your trip.
The terminal decides the hotel
In most cities the hotel question is about neighbourhood. In Manila it is about which terminal you are flying out of, and that is not a joke.
Manila's airport has several terminals and they are separate buildings, not concourses. Moving between them means leaving the airport, taking a road, and checking in again, in Manila traffic.
So if your trip continues to Palawan, Cebu or Siargao on an early flight from a terminal you did not arrive at, the hotel needs to be chosen around that rather than around the view.
That is the single most useful sentence on this page, and our Manila travel guide explains the terminal problem in full. Ask us to build the Philippines connection.
The one place we recommend an airport hotel
We spend most of these pages telling people not to stay at airports. Manila is the exception.
If your island flight leaves early from a specific terminal, a night near that terminal removes the single biggest risk in a Philippines itinerary. It is not glamorous. It saves the holiday.
The alternative is crossing the city at five in the morning, on a road that is unpredictable in a way Australians do not have a reference point for, to reach a flight that will not wait.
Book the geography that matches the flight.
The traffic is the constraint
Australians who have survived Bangkok and Jakarta still arrive here unprepared.
Manila's traffic is in a category of its own, and the practical consequence is that distance stops being a useful measure. A journey that looks like twenty minutes on a map can take two hours at the wrong time of day, routinely rather than exceptionally.
Which means the itinerary rule here is one thing per day, and the hotel rule is: stay near the thing you are actually doing.
Visitors who book a nice hotel across the city from their plans spend the trip in a car being angry, and then say Manila is terrible. Manila is not terrible. The booking was.
The areas
Makati. The comfortable answer. Business district, safe, excellent restaurants, walkable in itself, deep hotel market with good value. A long way from Intramuros.
Bonifacio Global City. Newer, glass and lawns, and it could be Singapore. Very comfortable and slightly characterless. Also a long way from the old city.
Intramuros. The interesting choice, and there are a handful of properties inside the walls. Staying there means you can walk the walls early, before the heat and the coaches, which is the best thing in the city. The trade is that you are further from the restaurants.
Malate and Ermita. Older tourist areas, mixed, and cheaper.
Near a terminal. See above. Sometimes the right answer.
Intramuros is genuinely good
Worth saying, because nobody expects it.
The Philippines was a Spanish colony for well over three centuries, which is considerably longer than the British held anything in India, and Intramuros is what remains of that: real walls you can walk on, San Agustin Church, which is the oldest stone church in the country and survived the war that flattened almost everything else here, and Fort Santiago, with the cell where José Rizal spent his last night and his footsteps marked in brass across the ground to the execution site.
Two or three hours, early, on foot or in a bamboo bicycle-cart with a guide. It is the best thing in Manila and it explains the entire country: the surnames, the churches, the food, the Catholicism.
If that interests you at all, stay inside the walls and do it at seven in the morning.
A business city, which helps
Makati and BGC are business districts with a deep hotel market, which is good news for a visitor.
It means competent, well-run properties at competitive rates, and it means rates frequently soften at weekends rather than hardening. That is the opposite of a leisure destination and it is worth knowing if your dates flex.
Two days, and then go
Manila is the door, and the country is behind it. Our Manila guide is blunt about this and we will be too.
Two days here at most. Intramuros, a food crawl through Binondo, which is the world's oldest Chinatown, and the museums which are free and better than they need to be.
Then Palawan, which is the reason: El Nido and Coron are limestone karst, lagoons and water that is genuinely the colour it is in the photographs. Or Siargao for surfing, Bohol for the Chocolate Hills and the tarsiers, Cebu as a second hub.
The mistake we see constantly: trying to fit three of those into one trip. This is an archipelago. Everything is a flight or a boat from everything else, and the flights go via Manila, which brings you back to the terminal problem at the top of this page. Pick one region and do it properly.
The typhoon season is real
December to May is the dry season and the peak, with Christmas and Easter the sharpest.
June to November is the wet season and also typhoon season, and that is a genuine planning consideration rather than a disclaimer, because typhoons cancel domestic flights and stop boats. In a country where boats are the transport, that matters enormously.
If you travel in that window, build slack into the itinerary and treat travel insurance as the point rather than the paperwork. Our travel insurance guide covers why.
The practical notes
Ride-hailing works well and removes the fare argument entirely.
Onward tickets are checked at the airport. Airlines enforce the requirement to hold a return or onward ticket, and it is a common reason people are refused boarding. Have it ready.
English is everywhere, widely and genuinely, which makes this one of the easier countries in the region.
Filipino hospitality is real, and it is the thing travellers report back on more than anything else.
Book the first night from the night before if you are landing at an awkward hour, which is the cheapest fix on any itinerary.
Rates are good value on a business calendar. Get a free Philippines quote and a consultant will reply within 2 business hours with the flights priced, the terminal named, and the domestic leg ticketed with the international one wherever the fares allow, so the transfer becomes the airline's problem rather than yours. Our flights to the Philippines page and Sydney to Manila page cover the corridor.
Booking notes
Prices shown by our partner are live and arrive in Australian dollars from our links, and free cancellation windows are stated on each listing. Our current hotel partner is Agoda, which grew up in South East Asia and lists Metro Manila accordingly, from the Makati and BGC towers down to the small Ermita hotels. Scores run out of 10 and come only from completed stays, and eligible bookings earn AgodaCash.