Alona Grove Tourist Inn

Alona Grove Tourist Inn: A Quiet Base in Barangay Danao

Alona Grove Tourist Inn sits on Hontanosas Road in Barangay Danao, north of the Alona Beach strip that gives the island’s hotel row its name. Trip.com scores the property 7.7 out of 10 from 8 reviews, fetched 27 July 2026 — a small sample, so treat the number as a starting point rather than a verdict, and weigh it against the guest comments below.

The Rooms

The inn has nine individually decorated guestrooms, each with a private balcony, complimentary wireless internet, and cable TV carrying a mix of international channels. Private bathrooms are fitted with rainfall showerheads and complimentary toiletries. Reviewers have flagged inconsistent hot water at times, so it’s worth confirming with the property directly if that matters to your stay. A continental breakfast is available daily from 7 to 10am for a fee, and room service runs limited hours.

Guest Feedback

The recurring theme across reviews is quiet: guests describe the inn as easy to find but set away from the noise generated by the bars and restaurants clustered on Alona’s main strip. Room rates have been reported around 1,100 PHP for two guests in past reviews, positioning it at the budget end of Panglao’s inn market, and multiple guests single out the owner’s service as going beyond what’s typical for the price point.

Location: Danao Beach vs. Alona Beach

Alona Grove sits roughly a one-minute walk from Danao Beach and about a ten-minute drive from Alona Beach itself. Danao Beach is the quieter, north-facing alternative to Alona — calmer water during the southwest monsoon season and generally preferred by families over the dive-shop-and-bar-strip atmosphere further south. Guests who book here are trading the density of restaurants and tour operators at Alona for a quieter stretch of coast and a short tricycle or drive to reach the busier beach when they want it.

Panglao Context

Danao’s fishing communities still work from a tradition of wooden boatbuilding, though fiberglass hulls have mostly replaced wood for the motorized outrigger boats now used for day-to-day fishing — one of the few places on the island where the older craft is still visibly practiced alongside the newer material. Inland, the interior barangays that ring Panglao’s coastal strip — Tangnan, Binoon, San Isidro — remain agricultural, growing coconut and root crops, a reminder that the tourism economy along the coast sits next to a working agricultural one just a few kilometres in.

At Poblacion, the island’s town center, the Panglao Watchtower — a five-storey hexagonal coral-stone tower built in 1851, declared a National Cultural Treasure in 2011, damaged in the 2013 earthquake, and restored and reopened in December 2017 — stands beside St. Augustine Parish Church, built mainly between 1894 and the early 1900s, with its nave finished in the 1920s and portico added in 1925. An earlier, ruined 19th-century church façade from 1858–59 sits on the same compound, making it a three-phase site for anyone interested in the island’s architectural history rather than only its beaches.

Day trips inland are straightforward from Danao: the Chocolate Hills — roughly 1,776 cone-shaped mounds across Carmen, Batuan, and Sagbayan, some close to 120 metres tall, which local legend attributes to the tears of a heartbroken giant rather than any documented geological account — and the Philippine Tarsier & Wildlife Sanctuary in Corella, where more than 500 tarsiers live and breed under strict no-flash, no-touch rules, are both commonly booked as a single half-day tour from this side of the island.

Reaching the Reef

Divers and snorkelers based in Danao are still within easy range of Panglao’s main dive operators, most of whom cluster around Alona Beach ten minutes south. Trips to Balicasag Island, a marine sanctuary about 20 minutes offshore by outrigger, run daily; the local government caps visitor numbers at 150 divers and snorkelers per day, limits each diver to two dives, and charges a roughly ₱250 environmental fee — a deliberate limit meant to protect the wall dive locals call the Black Forest and a reef known for sea turtle cleaning stations.

The Island Itself

Panglao is technically a separate island from Bohol, connected to the mainland by two bridges — one at Tagbilaran-Dauis and another on the Maribojoc side — despite sitting close enough that most visitors barely notice the crossing. At roughly 44 square kilometres with about 40,000 residents as of the 2020 census, it carries a disproportionate share of Bohol’s tourism traffic for its size. The parish fiesta, Hudyaka sa Panglao, falls on 28 August each year, centered on the church and watchtower compound at Poblacion described above.

Who Should Book Here

This suits travelers who want proximity to a beach without the density of Alona’s main strip — couples and families prioritizing quiet over nightlife, and budget travelers comfortable with a simpler package of amenities. It won’t suit anyone who wants to walk out the door directly onto Alona Beach or into its restaurant row.

Getting There: Tricycles connect Hontanosas Road to both Alona Beach (about ten minutes) and Tagbilaran City; agree on a fare before setting off.