Hayahay Resort

Hayahay Resort: Beachfront in the Alona Cluster

Hayahay Resort sits directly on the sand near Alona Beach’s main tourist strip, with Booking.com listing copy describing it as beachfront while placing the busiest part of Alona itself about 550 metres along the shore. Booking.com rates the property 7.6 (“Good”) from 425 reviews — a large sample for a 24-room property, which suggests steady year-round turnover rather than a seasonal spike.

The rooms

Hayahay runs 24 rooms with air conditioning, private bathrooms, mini-bars, and flat-screen TVs; several are ground-floor units that open straight onto the beach path rather than requiring stairs, and floors throughout are tiled rather than carpeted — a practical choice for a beachfront property where guests track in sand daily.

On site

The resort’s restaurant covers a wider range than most Alona-area kitchens — American, Thai, and Filipino dishes across brunch, lunch, and dinner, plus a barbecue grill for outdoor evening service. A sun terrace and outdoor seating areas face the water, and the front desk runs private check-in and check-out along with a tour desk and small minimarket for guests who’d rather not walk into town for essentials.

The reef in front of the resort

The house reef along this stretch of Alona drops from shallow coral gardens to a wall around 20 to 30 metres, with the reef edge itself starting only 30 to 50 metres offshore — close enough for a beachfront property to offer direct wade-in snorkeling in calm conditions, typically June through October. Boat dives to Balicasag Island, roughly 20 minutes out by outrigger, reach a marine sanctuary where the municipality caps diver traffic at 150 people a day with a roughly ₱250 per-diver environmental fee, a cap set specifically because the reef couldn’t hold up under unmanaged demand.

The economy behind the boats

Panglao’s dive and tour trade is one of the island’s two real livelihoods, alongside the coconut and root-crop farming still practiced in interior barangays like Tangnan and Binoon. Fishing families in barangays such as Danao and Boljo-on kept traditional wooden boat-building alive for generations, though fibreglass hulls have largely replaced timber for the motorised outriggers now used for both fishing and tourist transport — a shift driven by lower maintenance costs rather than any loss of the underlying craft knowledge.

History on the day-trip circuit

Guests staying at Hayahay commonly combine beach days with a trip to Poblacion, Panglao’s inland municipal seat, where the Panglao Watchtower — a five-storey hexagonal coral-stone structure built in 1851 and declared a National Cultural Treasure in 2011 — stands beside the St. Augustine Parish Church, itself built mostly between 1894 and the 1920s. Both sit on the same compound as the ruins of an even earlier 19th-century church, giving visitors three distinct building phases in one stop before continuing on to Chocolate Hills or the Philippine Tarsier Sanctuary near Corella, both roughly 45 minutes to an hour inland.

Practical details

A tricycle to Tagbilaran City or the airport runs about 150 to 200 PHP; fast ferries to Cebu depart roughly hourly from Tagbilaran port and take about two hours. Panglao’s tap water is not potable island-wide — a function of the island’s freshwater lens running under strain from tourism-driven demand — so bottled or filtered water is standard practice here as at every Panglao property.

How this strip became what it is

Organised dive tourism along Alona started in the early 1980s, when backpackers passing through the Visayas began putting up small beach huts and dive shops on what was then undeveloped shoreline. Growth continued gradually through the 1990s and then accelerated sharply after 2018, when Panglao International Airport opened on the island itself and pulled much of Bohol’s air traffic away from the older Tagbilaran airport — a shift that turned Alona from a backpacker stop into the dense strip of resorts, dive shops, and restaurants it is today, Hayahay among them.

Beyond the beach

Guests who want a day away from the water without leaving Panglao have inland options besides the countryside tour: South Farm Panglao runs an organic farm-and-recreation setup with animal encounters and a small restaurant, and the Panglao Golf, Sports and Entertainment Park offers a driving range and sports facilities a short drive from Alona. Neither is essential, but both give a stay here more than a strict choice between beach days and Chocolate Hills day trips.

What a dive actually costs

For guests weighing whether to add diving to a stay, a two-tank introductory dive with a Panglao operator typically runs 3,500–4,500 PHP, gear included — a starting point for budgeting rather than a fixed rate, since certification level and site choice both move the price. Loboc River cruises, the other half of the standard day-trip pairing with Chocolate Hills, run aboard floating restaurants with a live band, a format that’s more about the food-and-music experience than the scenery itself.

Who it suits

At 7.6 with a large review base, Hayahay reads as a consistent, unglamorous beachfront option rather than a standout — solid for divers and snorkelers who want to walk out of their room and into the water, less suited to travelers expecting boutique styling or resort-level service for the price.