Bondi terror suspects’ red light district bolthole: Father and son’s month in seedy Philippines hotel favoured by sex tourists

The father and son accused of carrying out the Bondi Beach massacre spent a month staying in this shabby £11-a-night ($22 AUD) one-star hotel in a red-light district in the Philippines in the weeks before the atrocity, the Daily Mail can reveal.

Sajid Akram, 50, and his son Naveed Akram, 24, travelled to the south-east Asian country in November for a break, before allegedly carrying out their atrocity at a Hanukkah event on Sunday which killed 15.

The pair stayed in a cramped twin room in the GV Hotel in Davao City, the country’s second biggest city, in an area filled with neon-lit massage parlours and go-go bars that is frequented by western sex tourists on the island of Mindanao.

Opposite the hotel is a spa called ‘Spring Valley’ which advertises a ‘happy hour’ from 10am to 5pm.

And just yards away is a bar called ‘Ladiestar’ which offers karaoke and ‘massage’.

Along from that, in a poignant coincidence, is a cocktail bar and restaurant named Bondi & Bourke, after the famous beach where the attack took place.

Davao City is a five-hour drive from the Islamic city of Marawi – which is where ISIS sympathisers have been waging a decade-long fight against the Catholic-dominated government.

Security experts have said they believe Sajid and Naveed travelled to the Philippines to undergo military style training, a claim which has been refuted by the troubled nation’s President Marcos.

Hotel staff showed the Daily Mail their ‘lair’ – room number 315 – on the third floor of the hotel where the men stayed throughout, living on takeaways.

Sparsely furnished with two single beds, an old television and an en-suite bathroom, it is here where they claimed the Akrams spent almost all their time holed up – and would only leave each day to buy food.

Jenelyn Sayson, who works at the hotel, said they ‘arrived with one big piece of luggage and a backpack each’ and cleaners would remove fast-food wrappers from their room.

She said they ate at the popular Jollibee chicken restaurant which is also famous for its spaghetti bolognese.

Unlike other guests, who are friendly and interact with staff as well as other tourists, the men were said to keep to themselves.

When they left the hotel they would walk over to the next street or walk towards the next block of hotels. Staff never saw them catch a cab or get picked up from the hotel.

‘We thought they probably had business here in the city since they would go out and just come back again,’ she added.

‘The longest that they would be outside would be around an hour and they would be just back here in the hotel.’

On one occasion, Naveed asked a staff member where he could buy durian, a type of fruit known for its pungent aroma and sweet taste. They were told to go to the Magsaysay Park and the Bankerohan market but are said to have returned with nothing.

The downmarket hotel is located in the city’s Poblacion District – known for its nightlife surrounded by several ‘bikini bars’ – strip clubs which proliferate in the city’s red-light district, where most bars have private rooms at the back that men can rent for just £25 ($50 AUD).

No documents or further evidence is said to have been found when authorities searched the room.

Sajid and Naveed flew at 11am from Sydney to Manila on November 1, arriving in the capital in the early hours of the morning.

They then took an internal flight to Davao where they checked into the budget GV Hotel around noon that day where they apparently stayed until November 28.

Philippines authorities have shut down the claims that the pair came to the country for terror training.

Armed forces there insist that there was no indication the alleged Bondi killers had trained with terror groups while in the country.

Col Francel Margareth Padilla said: ‘From the field units, the data states that there are no foreign terrorist activities in the area. There are no trainings that are being conducted in the area.’

However, investigations into what the men were indeed doing during their month-long stay in the country continue.

The initial police investigation showing that they stayed exclusively in the city of Davao and did not leave would be a version of events the Philippine government would be happy with.

The country’s national security advisor Eduardo Año told journalists the country is working with Australia to gather intelligence on the two men and establish their reason for travelling to the Philippines.

Mr Año confirmed the dates of entry into the country, adding that Sajid had travelled on an Indian passport while his son Naveed travelled on an Australian passport.

It is understood detectives are now tracing the men’s credit cards and local SIM cards to track down their exact movements.

It has been suggested that they used Davao as an entry point to then access by car the city of Cagayan de Oro and later Marawi.

Marawi is widely known as a no-go-zone for tourists and locals alike with the Filipino government even issuing a category four warning to its civilians to not travel to the region under any circumstances.

Civilians travelling there face risk of death due to the ongoing violent clashes between terrorist groups and the Filipino armed forces.

The area was taken over by an offshoot of IS – called the Maute Group – in 2017 which led to the displacement of 350,000 from the area of the country, which is predominantly Catholic.

Following the attack on Sunday, in which Jews were shot dead in Sydney who had been celebrating the beginning of Hannukah, officers in Australia uncovered two homemade ISIS flags from Naveed’s vehicle. Two bombs were also found in the car.

New South Wales police commissioner Mal Lanyon confirmed on Tuesday that both men had travelled to the Philippines but said at this time the reason is still unknown.

Meanwhile immigration spokeswoman Dana Sandoval told The Australian: ‘Sajid Akram, 50, an Indian national (Australian resident) and Naveed Akram, 24, Australian national, arrived in the Philippines together last November 1, 2025, from Sydney Australia.

‘Both reported Davao as their final destination. They left the country on November 28, 2025, on a connecting flight from Davao to Manila, with Sydney as their final destination.’

Sajid was shot after the attack on Sunday, which also injured 42 other people.

Meanwhile his son, a bricklayer who survived the police shootout and was taken to hospital, has been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder and one count of committing a terrorist act in what investigators allege may have been ‘inspired by Isis’.