Francisco Resort

Francisco Resort: A 21-Room Pool Resort Ten Minutes from Alona

Francisco Resort sits at Purok 5, Barangay Danao, about 1 kilometer from Alona Beach and roughly 2.6 kilometers from Danao Beach — close enough to Alona for an easy tricycle ride, but set back from the strip itself in a quieter residential pocket. The resort has 21 rooms, each with air conditioning, a private bathroom, a work desk, tiled floors, and free toiletries, with garden- or pool-view options. Communal spaces include an outdoor swimming pool, a garden, a shared lounge, a terrace, and outdoor picnic spots — enough layout variety that groups can spread across different corners of the property rather than sharing one small common area. The resort runs a restaurant with room service, plus a concierge desk that organizes tours. Bohol–Panglao International Airport is close, about 0.6 miles away. Booking.com shows a 9.0 “Wonderful” score, though it’s built on only two reviews so far — worth noting as a small sample rather than a settled reputation, especially against the resort’s estimated PHP 6,680 nightly rate, which sits well above Panglao’s typical mid-range band of PHP 3,000–6,000.

Rooms and Grounds

At 21 rooms, Francisco Resort is larger than most of the guest houses and small inns scattered through Danao and Tawala, closer in scale to a proper resort than a family-run inn. The mix of lounge, terrace, and picnic-area seating suggests a property built with groups and multi-generational travel in mind rather than solo backpackers — guests can find a quiet corner without needing a private balcony in every room.

Danao’s Character

Barangay Danao sits inland of Alona’s immediate beachfront strip and mixes tourism properties with the coconut-farming households that still work much of Panglao’s interior. It’s a useful base for travelers who want Alona’s dive shops and restaurants within a short ride but prefer not to sleep in the middle of the beachfront noise.

Local Taste and Economic Context

A dish worth trying nearby is kinilaw na tanigue, raw Spanish mackerel cured in coconut vinegar, ginger, chili, and onion — the vinegar itself tapped and produced on Panglao rather than shipped in. The economics of a 21-room resort like Francisco also illustrate the range in Panglao’s accommodation market: the destination as a whole spans backpacker huts at PHP 600–800 a night up through a handful of four-star properties, and a mid-sized pool resort like this one occupies the upper-middle of that spread, closer to the mid-range ceiling than the backpacker floor.

Day Trips Inland

The resort’s tour desk can arrange the standard mainland circuit: Chocolate Hills, the cluster of grass-covered limestone cones roughly 45 minutes to an hour inland, and the Philippine Tarsier Sanctuary, a similar distance away, plus river cruises on the Loboc. A well-known piece of local lore attributes the Chocolate Hills’ formation to the tears of a heartbroken giant named Arogo — a folk story guides still tell tourists on the drive out, offered as legend rather than the marine-limestone erosion that geologists credit.

Water and Practical Notes

Panglao has no river system of its own, and every property on the island, including Francisco Resort, draws water from a freshwater lens sitting above denser seawater in the limestone bedrock. Dry-season over-extraction has pushed chloride levels in some wells well past WHO drinking-water thresholds, so bottled or filtered water is the standard here, not tap water. A tricycle to Tagbilaran City runs roughly PHP 150–350 depending on whether it’s shared or hired, and hourly fast ferries connect the mainland to Cebu in about two hours.

Reef Management Nearby

Guests using Francisco as a base for Alona’s dive shops will likely be offered a trip to Balicasag Island, 20 minutes out by outrigger and one of the most-cited dive destinations in the Visayas for its resident sea turtles. Access there isn’t unlimited: the local government caps diving and snorkeling at 150 people a day, two dives per diver, booked in advance, with a roughly ₱250 environmental fee collected per diver. It’s a deliberate constraint on a reef that, left unmanaged, couldn’t sustain the volume of visitors the wider municipality now draws — worth knowing before assuming a same-day booking will be available in peak season.

A Recent Shift in How Guests Arrive

Much of Francisco Resort’s convenience owes to a relatively recent piece of infrastructure: Panglao International Airport, which opened directly on the island in 2018 and shifted the bulk of Bohol’s air traffic away from the older Tagbilaran City airport across the strait. Before that, most visitors landed in Tagbilaran and crossed one of the two bridges linking the mainland to Panglao — a 15–20 minute tricycle or multicab ride that’s still how ferry passengers and budget travelers reach the island today.

Francisco Resort suits groups and families wanting pool and lounge space with an easy ride to Alona’s beach and dive shops, and travelers comfortable paying above Panglao’s mid-range rate for more room and grounds than a standard guest house offers.