Greenfields Tourist Inn

Greenfields Tourist Inn: A 19-Room Inn Ten Minutes from Alona

Greenfields Tourist Inn sits on Greenfields Street in Barangay Tawala, about 3.3 kilometers from Panglao’s town center and roughly a 10-minute drive from both Alona Beach and Danao Beach — set back from the coast rather than beachfront itself. The property has 19 rooms across three types — twin, double, and family — each with air conditioning, free toiletries, a flat-screen TV, a private bathroom, a terrace, an outdoor dining area, and a clothes rack. An outdoor pool and garden round out the grounds, alongside free WiFi, tour and ticket assistance, free private parking, and car rental service. Booking.com lists a 7.0 “Good” rating from 91 reviews, and Bohol–Panglao International Airport is close, about 1.5 kilometers away.

Rooms and Room Types

Offering three distinct room categories — twin, double, and family — at a 2-star, 19-room property gives Greenfields more configuration flexibility than most Panglao guest houses its size, which often default to one or two standard layouts. The outdoor dining area attached to each room is also a practical touch for guests who’d rather eat a takeaway meal on their own terrace than in a shared restaurant space.

Set Back from the Beach

Ten minutes by vehicle from Alona is a meaningful distance on an island where the busiest properties are within a five-minute walk of the sand. Greenfields’ trade-off is a quieter setting closer to the airport, at the cost of needing a tricycle or rented scooter for daily beach trips rather than walking. Tour and ticket assistance on-site helps offset that distance by handling bookings without guests needing to negotiate directly with Alona-based tour operators.

Economic Context

Panglao’s accommodation spans backpacker huts at PHP 600–800 a night, mid-range cottages at PHP 3,000–6,000, and a small number of four-star resorts above that. Greenfields’ estimated PHP 2,000 rate, with three room types and included car rental service, sits in the lower-middle of that spread — a fair reflection of its inland, non-beachfront position relative to Alona-strip properties charging more for direct sand access.

Local Taste

Tawala remains one of Panglao’s three busiest tourist barangays, alongside Danao and Bolod, even away from the immediate beachfront strip. A dish worth trying locally is kinilaw na tanigue, raw Spanish mackerel cured in coconut vinegar, ginger, chili, and onion, made with vinegar tapped and produced on the island itself, and Larsian-style barbecue stalls set up along the Tawala road from late afternoon for a cheaper dinner option than sit-down restaurants.

Day Trips Inland

The inn’s tour and ticket desk can arrange the standard mainland circuit: Chocolate Hills, roughly 45 minutes to an hour inland, and the Philippine Tarsier Sanctuary, a similar distance. A well-known piece of Bohol folklore attributes the Chocolate Hills’ formation to the tears of a heartbroken giant named Arogo, mourning a lost love — a story local guides still tell tourists on the drive out, offered as legend rather than the marine-limestone erosion that actually shaped the hills.

Water and Practical Notes

Panglao draws its domestic water entirely from a freshwater lens within the island’s limestone bedrock, since there’s no river system on the island; dry-season over-extraction has pushed some wells’ chloride levels well past WHO drinking-water thresholds, which is why bottled or filtered water is standard practice here rather than tap water. A tricycle to Tagbilaran City runs roughly PHP 150–350, and hourly fast ferries connect the mainland to Cebu in about two hours.

Diving and Reef Management

Guests booking dive trips through the inn’s tour desk will be routed to Alona-based operators running daily boats to Balicasag Island, about 20 minutes out by outrigger and one of the most-cited dive destinations in the Visayas for its resident sea turtles. Access is capped by the local government at 150 divers and snorkelers a day, two dives maximum per diver, booked in advance with a roughly ₱250 environmental fee — a deliberate limit on a reef considered too small to absorb Panglao’s full visitor volume without management.

An Inland Heritage Option

Guests looking for a change from beach shuttles have a genuine heritage stop within reach at Poblacion, Panglao’s municipal seat: the San Agustin Parish Church complex, anchored by the Panglao Watchtower, a five-storey hexagonal coral-stone tower built in 1851 and declared a National Cultural Treasure in 2011. It was damaged in the 2013 Bohol earthquake and restored and reopened to the public in 2017, though only its exterior and grounds are accessible today. The adjoining St. Augustine Parish Church, built mainly between 1894 and the 1920s, carries nave ceiling murals of the Seven Sacraments — a compact stop that pairs well with a half-day away from Alona’s beach crowds.

Greenfields Tourist Inn suits travelers who want a quieter, inland setting with flexible room types and on-site tour assistance, and who don’t mind a short drive rather than a walk to reach Alona’s beach and dive shops.