TipTop Hotel, Resto and Delishop

TipTop Hotel, Resto and Delishop: Steps Off the Alona Corridor

TipTop Hotel, Resto and Delishop sits on Ester Lim Drive in Barangay Tawala — the same barangay that contains Alona Beach itself, just set back from the beachfront strip. Guest accounts and the listing’s own distance estimate agree: it’s roughly a 10–15 minute walk to Alona Beach, and about 1.4 km (0.9 mi) from Danao Beach. Reviewers describe it consistently as off a side road from the main tourist drag rather than remote from it — close enough to walk in for dinner or a dive-shop booking, far enough to skip the nightly noise.

The Rooms

Room types run from a Quadruple Room with balcony and two full beds, through Deluxe and Premium Doubles, a Suite with garden view, up to a One-Bedroom Villa sleeping four or more across two twin beds and a full bed. Furnishings are mahogany wood throughout, and every room comes with a balcony, cable TV, an in-room safe, and a mini-bar — a step up in fit-out from the typical Alona-area budget room. Reviewers singled out water pressure and air-conditioning specifically: one called the shower hot with strong water pressure, another noted a cold, quiet room despite pool activity nearby.

Reviews at Scale

With close to 400 reviews on Booking.com and an 8.6 “Excellent” score, TipTop has enough review volume to support real pattern-reading rather than guesswork. Value for money scores highest of any category at 9.0, and staff service follows at 9.2 — several reviewers named specific bar staff by name for good service. Cleanliness and comfort both sit at 8.9. The one recurring soft spot is breakfast: at least one guest reviewer flagged the eggs specifically as poorly cooked, a useful counterweight to the otherwise strong scores if breakfast quality matters to the stay. Location scores 8.5 — reviewers repeatedly describe the property as quiet at night despite sitting close to Alona’s activity, crediting the side-road position rather than a beachfront address.

On-Site: Restaurant, Delishop, and Practicalities

The property’s restaurant serves Filipino dishes alongside a cocktail bar, and reviewers rate it well above what’s typical for a hotel’s in-house kitchen — independent mentions of good food at fair prices show up across different guests, including praise for Western-style dishes. The attached Delishop functions as a mini-mart, useful for snacks, sundries, or self-catering basics without a trip into town. Laundry service is available on-site, and an airport shuttle can be arranged for an additional charge. One practical note before booking: TipTop accepts cash payment only — plan currency accordingly, since a card at the front desk won’t settle the bill here. Check-in is from 2pm, checkout by noon.

The Wider Neighborhood

A short tricycle ride from Tawala into Poblacion, Panglao’s town center, leads to the Panglao Watchtower — a five-story hexagonal coral-stone tower built in 1851 as a lookout against seaborne raiders, and the tallest surviving Spanish colonial-era military watchtower in the Philippines. It was declared a National Cultural Treasure in August 2011 and reopened to visitors in December 2017 after repairs from 2013 earthquake damage. Beside it stands St. Augustine Parish Church, built mostly between 1894 and the 1920s, with a nave ceiling painted with murals of the Seven Sacraments and a portico added in 1925 — next to the shell of an earlier 19th-century church with a Baroque façade dated 1858.

Panglao’s food economy runs on small cooperative operations as much as on restaurants like TipTop’s own. In Barangay Tangnan, a short drive from Tawala, a cooperative called KASOTAPA operates a shared-use sorbetes facility — Filipino street ice cream, traditionally hand-churned and sold from carts — set up under the government’s One Town One Product livelihood program. It’s a small-scale, community-level counterpart to the hotel-and-restaurant trade TipTop itself represents.

Pricing in Context

At an estimated ₱2,730 a night — an OTA-comparable estimate rather than a confirmed live rate, so check current availability before planning around it — TipTop sits toward the lower end of Panglao’s mid-range bracket, a market that runs from roughly ₱600–800 backpacker huts up through the ₱3,000–6,000 cottage tier to a handful of four-star resorts. For a property this close to Alona with a near-400-review track record and a 9.0 value score, that combination is a large part of what reviewers describe as the draw.

One Date Worth Knowing

Guests visiting in late August will find Poblacion, a short ride from Tawala, busy with Hudyaka sa Panglao — the municipal fiesta held every 28 August in honor of St. Augustine of Hippo, the same saint the parish church up the road is named for. “Hudyaka” is Cebuano for communal revelry, and the day brings parades, dance competitions, and food stalls across all ten of Panglao’s barangays, Tawala included — worth factoring into a stay if traffic and noise near the town center matter to the trip.

Who Should Book Here

TipTop suits travelers who want walkable proximity to Alona’s dive shops and nightlife without paying beachfront rates or absorbing beachfront noise, and who’d rather rely on a well-reviewed on-site restaurant than hunt for meals elsewhere. It’s a weaker fit for anyone who wants to walk directly onto sand, or who needs to pay by card rather than cash on-site.