Ironwulf.net: En Route – The Philippines, Travel, Photography Blog

Microtel for many years have already established their brand. “It’s the same hotel where ever you go” as their slogan says. For the regular patrons, this is a good thing. They really do have one of the most comfortable chiropractic beds around and the familiar interiors would make it easier for guest to feel at home. While they do have a template for their hotels, they do make adjustments on their resort-type hotels. Like their Boracay branch, Microtel made adjustments to their beach front hotel in Puerto Princesa, Emerald Playa Beach and Nature Park.

I woke up as early as 4:30am and I was really hungry (do you see a pattern here?). Anyways I’m really used to waking up real early when I travel, that’s to capture what we photographers call “The Golden Hours”. Since I don’t have any snacks with me at the room, I went down to the lobby to check if there’s anything I could buy or eat. Sadly, according to the receptionist at that time, there’s nothing open and they don’t have any snacks to sell. Too bad. They should have a mini bar there or something. I went to the lounge to see what I could find and surprisingly, I found Gail already working with some CSS codes! Wow! Turns out she really works early morning.

Day 1 of the Travel and Photo bloggers excursion to Boracay started very early. I was literally pulling myself out of bed around 3:30 in the morning just to make it for the 5am call time at the domestic airport. Only had less than a couple of hours of sleep that evening finalizing a project I’m doing. At the same time, I’m very excited for the weekend. I haven’t been to Boracay for some time and going along with fellow travelers and Photo enthusiast calls for an interesting weekend. When I got to the Terminal around 5, Karla was already there, followed by Abe, Gail with Marc, then Eugenius.

It seems an ambitious feat to bring some of the Philippine’s travel related bloggers together, but at the weekend, January 11-13 2008, around 13 bloggers gathered together in the paradise island of Boracay. This wouldn’t have been possible without Abe Olandres of Yugatech bringing us together and Microtel Inn and Seair Airlines for taking us there. It’s great to know that companies lately regard bloggers as an important part of media, thus including us in their marketing plan.

It would seem that companies lately have seen a lot of potential in using blogs as a marketing tool for their businesses. And here in the Philippines, they have started tapping on some of the popular bloggers specializing on their respective niches. That said, I was a bit surprised when I received an email invitation from the Philippine’s pro-blogging guru Abe Olandres or also known as Yuga of Yugatech to attend a dinner invitation from Microtel Inn and Suites Philippines. As I don’t really attend much blogger events, I decided it would be nice to attend this one since the niche is more on blogs involved in travel and photography. I thought it would be nice to meet these other travel bloggers as well.