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ibis Styles Araneta City Manila Phillipines Review

I stayed 2 nights at the ibis Styles Araneta City near Manila in the Phillipines in June 2025. ibis Styles is a the value hotel brand that is part of the Accor All program. I took advantage of the status match to Diamond from Bilt so I wanted to try some of the Accor properties. The benefits of Diamond at an ibis Styles is early/late checkout if available, a welcome drink at one of the restaurants, and free breakfast at Asia Pacific properties.

I booked directly on the website and the total for the stay was just $86.48 for 2 nights. By comparison, any Hilton, Marriott, or Hyatt was at least $100 per night. The lowest price I could find for an USA based chain was IHG, at around $80/night. Even local 3 star hotels are around $30/night.

It’s about an hour from the Manila Airport by Grab, which was only about $8 USD. I would avoid the tolls because it only saved me a couple minutes.

I checked in at around 6PM and it was seamless. I was assigned to a king room on the 12th floor. Since they essentially have 2 room types, no upgrades were available. The room is modern but basic, about 200 square feet. It includes a safe and a small fridge.

The breakfast buffet was in the restaurant on the 5th floor and is included with diamond status, or about $13 without. It was actually the best breakfast I’ve ever had at a value hotel, and way better than any Hyatt Place or Marriott value property that I’ve been to.

Some highlights of the breakfast (free with Diamond, $13/pp without):

Made to order omelette station
Made to order ramen station
Rolled ice cream cart with toppings
Salad station
Pressed juices and juice station
Local food station that had rotating entrees including pork adobo, beef stew, chicken afritada, and daing na bangus (fried fish) while I was there. They had 6 dishes at the local food station and all 6 were different between days.
3 different types of eggs (scrambled, sunny side, hard boiled)
Waffles, pancakes, bacon
Dessert/Pastry station with over 15 different pastries or breads. The bread budding and ube cake was particularly good.

I went as only there for two days, and they rotated many of the main dishes and pastries between days.

The gym is also on the 5th floor and had weights up to 22kg, a couple weight machines, a dip station, a boxing area, a single bench, and a pulley station. Unfortunately, no squat rack or even a smith machine. For cardio they had 3 treadmills, a stationary bike, and a spin bike. They also had an inbody scale and hot/cold towels.

I checked out at 1PM (they were unable to give me a later check-out due to availability). Supposedly 4PM is possible, depending on the day.

Some thoughts:

There are so many good hotels besides the big US chains. If I only looked at a Hyatt, Marriott, or Hilton property, I would have had to at least 2x more (in cash or points).
If no one has status, then your status goes way further.
So far, best breakfast of any value property I’ve been to.

ANA Round the World Trip (SE Asia, Nepal, Africa, Europe)

Booked an ANA Round the world trip right before they are planning to close the program. This is probably one of the best use of points and miles. It took a couple hours of research, but it wasn’t as difficult as I expected, probably because I was only looking for a single seat. I also had 330k stranded ANA miles so it was a great time to use it before RTW trips fly away.

The goal of the entire trip was to spend some time exploring southeast Asia, then head to Africa for a safari, and then spend some time in Europe before heading to the east coast.

My itinerary is:

LAX-ICN-HKG on Asiana (Los Angeles to Hong Kong)
VTE-BKK-DEL on Thai Airways (Laos to Delhi)
KTM-SIN-SZN on Singapore Airways (Katmandu to Shenzhen)
SZN-JNB on Air China (Shenzhen to Johannesburg)
JNB-ADD-IST on Ethiopian (Johannesburg to Istanbul)
FCO-IAD on United (Rome to Washington DC)

I was able to find business availability for all flights.

I paid 170000 Amex Membership Rewards Points + $920 in taxes/fees for these flights. That would be the equivalent of about $2800.

Some thoughts:

Even though the list price for these exact flights is $13944 in business, it is highly misleading. I can get equivalent or better business class flights for $8787 if I didn’t have to stick to the exact flights bookable with the ANA RTW program.
I could get the business class cash price even lower, probably close to $6000. Since I was extremely flexible, I didn’t have to arrive in HKG, return from Rome, or stop at any of the specific cities. This opens up other possibilities.
Versus economy, I paid about $800 more for over 60 hours in business class.
Even the best deal in points and miles isn’t necessarily cheaper than economy, but it is great value.
These itineraries had to be booked over the phone. The hold times were long, but I can do other things while waiting so it isn’t bad at all. The customer service was amazing. I’ve had much worse experiences with domestic carriers (cough Frontier).

SAS Eurobonus Millionaire Challenge

SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) joined Skyteam and issued a challenge for the end of 2024. If you fly 15 Skyteam airlines, and credit the points to SAS, you will receive 1 million SAS miles. I decided to do this challenge to exercise my flying/planning chops. This would be the first time I’ve flown outside of North America for about 15 years. The 1 million mile bonus (worth maybe $8000-10k to me) meant the entire trip was essentially free or negative cost.

Some stats for the trip:

15 Days
24 Segments Flown
25 Airports Visited
17 Airlines Flown
30+ Airport Lounges Visited
27966 miles flown, 9546 miles in business class
$2921, 75k Aeroplan Points, 40k AA Points Spent on Flights
$316, 33k Hyatt Points, 10k Marriott Points Spent On Hotels
$539 Spent on Misc (Food, Sightseeing, Ubers, Visas)
Total Cost: $3776, 75k Aeroplan, 40k AA, 33k Hyatt, 10k Marriott Points

Some thoughts:

I programmed too much time for layovers, especially in Europe. Since it was my first time flying internationally in 15 years, I didn’t know how efficient the transfer system was and added too much buffer time.
I didn’t want to just fly, I wanted to spend some time at some of these cities, which increased the cost. I spent a day or two in Barcelona, Bucharest, Jakarta, and Seoul.
I flew out of Incheon right as a huge snow storm hit. The flight was delayed 2 hours but I got lucky and many other flights were canceled that day.
I got lucky and immigration at Fuzhou let me through on a temporary stay for transit, even though they didn’t have a 24 Transit Without Visa Policy. They were highly professional and let me through without an issue.
I unfortunately got a terrible cold/cough/diarrhea/night sweats halfway through the trip.
Best flight: Qatar first/business from Dubai to Doha to Jakarta.
The daytime flight from TPE-SFO in United Polaris wasn’t worth the points. I was awake for all but 3 hours so the lie flat seat wasn’t worth the price premium.
All but one of the flights was on time. The only issue with the flights was with Kenya Airways, which was canceled/rebooked, which cascaded to about $290 in fees.
It’s been 7 days since the last leg and I’ve gotten 13/15 flights credited to SAS.

Overall it was a fun experience and I would do it again. I learned a lot about flying international and it made me more confident to book complicated trips in the future.

True Point Value: an example of misleading cents per point value

I’m not a fan of using cents per point (CPP) to measure the amount saved using points, particularly since point programs are designed to alter our purchasing and travel behavior. CPP is often misleading because

You would never have paid the sticker price for what you purchase with points. The actual value of the item to you (the amount you would have paid) is almost always less than sticker price.
CPP doesn’t consider all the ancillary bookings like positioning hotels and positioning flights necessary to take advantage of a redemption.
CPP doesn’t consider viable alternatives if you were to book with cash.
As a corollary to (3), CPP doesn’t consider the cost of flexibility. If you’re willing to make your travel plans around a unicorn business class flight, the viable alternatives should be equally as flexible.
To make points bookings, you need bank of depreciating points. Even the most ardent sticklers of the “earn and burn” strategy most likely has million+ points banked at any given time. With a 5% depreciation rate, you lose 50k points per year for every million points banked.

Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome is usually around $1497/night for a random set of nights.

There are several highly rated, 5* hotels in the area. They are about a third the price of the Park Hyatt.

An example of (3) is the Hyatt Paris Vendome. During these nights, they are 35k points per night while the sticker price was $1500/night. On paper, that’s 4.29 cents per point. Very few of us would have paid the sticker price. One of the reasons is because there are a half dozen 5-star, exceptional (9.3+/10 on Expedia) hotels within 3 blocks of this hotel and they are going for 1/3 to 1/2 the price! Even if you wanted a luxury stay in Paris, most of us wouldn’t have paid $1000/night to stay at this particular hotel.

If you’re willing to pay $700/night for a luxury hotel at the Paris City Center, the true CPP for this Hyatt booking is closer to 2 cents per point rather than 4.29.

The best way to get the actual value of the points is to look holistically at all reasonable alternatives while planning a trip. Compare your entire trip with points versus what you would have booked with cash. This includes being just as flexible with dollars as you are with points, and valuing trips by the actual cash amount you would pay for it, not some inflated sticker price.