Shas Resort

Overview

Shas Resort sits in Purok 3, Tawala, close enough to Alona Beach that the resort’s own materials describe it as minutes away rather than requiring a significant ride. It’s a newer property — guest reviews repeatedly describe it as “brand new” and in excellent physical condition, consistent with a build young enough that it hasn’t accumulated the wear visible at some longer-running Alona-area resorts. Booking.com scores it 8.9 (“Excellent”) from 108 reviews, one of the higher ratings in this batch of Panglao properties, and the review pattern skews heavily toward comments about the pool, the gardens, and staff helpfulness rather than complaints about upkeep.

The Accommodation

Room categories run from a Single Deluxe Room built for solo travelers up to a Family Room with a king bed and space for up to five guests with extra beds, plus a private terrace. A Queen Deluxe suits couples, and notably, the resort also offers a wheelchair-accessible Queen Room — a genuinely uncommon feature at this price tier in Panglao, where accessibility is rarely mentioned in listings at all. Every room includes air conditioning, a private bathroom with hot and cold shower, complimentary WiFi, a bar fridge, and daily housekeeping.

Accessibility as a Real Differentiator

Beyond the wheelchair-accessible room itself, the resort’s outdoor spaces are also built to be accessibility-friendly, extending beyond the single compliant room to the grounds guests actually spend time in — the gazebo lounge, gardens, and open areas. This is a genuine, checkable social-accessibility feature rather than a vague inclusivity claim, and it stands out specifically because so few Panglao properties in this price range design for wheelchair users at all, most instead built around stairs, uneven garden paths, and step-up thresholds inherited from older construction.

Grounds and What Guests Notice

A gazebo lounge, tropical gardens, and open outdoor space for groups or children to move freely are the resort’s central shared amenities, alongside an outdoor pool that shows up repeatedly and specifically in guest feedback as a highlight rather than a generic mention. The front desk operates roughly 7am to 11pm rather than 24 hours, worth noting for anyone arriving on a late flight into Panglao’s small international terminal. A restaurant across from the property, rather than an in-house dining room, handles most meals — guests consistently point to it by name in reviews as worth trying during a stay.

New Construction in Context

Being a newer build in Tawala places Shas Resort within a wave of Panglao construction that has followed the 2018 opening of Panglao International Airport, which shifted a meaningful share of Bohol’s air traffic away from Tagbilaran’s older airport and pulled fresh investment toward the island directly. Newer Panglao builds also tend to reflect updated construction standards adopted island-wide in the years following the 2013 Bohol earthquake, which damaged older structures including the historic Panglao Watchtower — a different, more resilience-focused baseline than resorts built before that event.

Local Taste and an Honest Note on Water

Kinilaw na tanigue — raw Spanish mackerel cured in coconut vinegar, ginger, chili, and onion, made with vinegar produced on Panglao itself — is worth seeking out at a Tawala-road stall specifically, a short walk from this address given its Purok 3 location. Panglao’s water supply comes entirely from a freshwater lens in the island’s limestone bedrock rather than any river system, and dry-season over-extraction has pushed chloride levels in some wells past the World Health Organization’s recommended threshold; tap water isn’t potable anywhere on the island, a newly built resort included, so bottled or filtered water remains standard regardless of a property’s age.

Practical Notes

A tricycle to Tagbilaran City or the ferry terminal runs the standard PHP 150–200, and fast boats to Cebu depart roughly hourly for about PHP 200. Inland, the Chocolate Hills and the Philippine Tarsier Sanctuary in Corella are both roughly 45 minutes to an hour by road, typically arranged through Tagbilaran- or Alona-based tour operators rather than the resort directly.

Who This Suits

The combination of a genuinely new build, a high review score, and an actual wheelchair-accessible room and grounds makes Shas Resort a strong option for travelers with mobility considerations who have found few workable choices elsewhere in Panglao’s older resort stock, and for anyone who simply wants the reliability of a recently constructed property over an older one with a similar star rating. Families traveling as a larger group benefit from the Family Room’s five-guest capacity, while solo travelers have a dedicated Single Deluxe category rather than being pushed into a double room at single-occupancy pricing. The main trade-off against a longer-established Alona-strip resort is depth of track record — 108 reviews is solid but still relatively recent compared to properties that have operated for a decade or more, and the front desk’s set hours rather than round-the-clock staffing are worth planning around for a late arrival.