The Metro Manila Development Authority is set to rebuild the Workers’ Inn (formerly Gwapotel) in Port Area, Manila to entice more guests, specifically transient students and low-income workers, to avail of the facility.
The four-story hotel, located beside the Department of Public Works and Highways central office, is being rehabilitated and repainted and installed with new toilets and bathrooms, MMDA officer-in-charge Thomas Orbos said.
Orbos added that MMDA personnel are also repainting and debugging the bunker beds in the budget hotel.
The Workers’ Inn, which was built in 2007, is no longer part of the MMDA’s mandate, according to Orbos, but the continuous maintenance and operations of the facility is part of its public service and charity work for laborers and students who live in the outskirts of Metro Manila.
“This is a missionary business. Although this venture is not generating much income, its continued operations will provide temporary shelter to its customers. The improved facilities will provide more comfort and will better serve the public,” Orbos said.
The Workers’ Inn posted net earnings of P1.4 million from January to June 2016. Its occupancy rate increased two weeks after it was given proper attention.
An average of over 400 guests stayed at the Gwapotel in August this year.
The facility provides safe and decent 12-hour lodging with free showers for workers, students and travelers for P50.
More than 20 food stalls on the ground floor of the inn offer guests a wide variety of local delicacies.
The Workers’ Inn started operating in 2007.
Closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV) were installed on each floor to ensure the safety of the guests. Each floor has a TV set, electric fans for ventilation, and beds for up to 200 guests. Security guards are on duty at any given time.
Ordinary workers, vendors, small entrepreneurs, white collar-job employees and other transients from the provinces doing business in Metro Manila have visited the hotel because they could not find an affordable, clean, safe and decent place to stay elsewhere.
The Gwapotel project is part of the MMDA’s urban renewal program, originally aimed at providing cheap but decent accommodations to workers whose place of residence is outside Metro Manila.
In September 2007, then MMDA chairman Bayani Fernando spearheaded the construction of Gwapotel to ease congestion in Metro Manila by giving out-of-town workers an inexpensive place to stay.
During its first year of service, the hotel, painted in Fernando’s signature pink and blue, posted an average occupancy rate of 73 percent, or 519 guests daily.