Vanilla Sky Resort

Vanilla Sky Resort: A Small Hotel in Barangay Danao

Vanilla Sky Resort sits on Kalipayan Road in Barangay Danao — a quieter, more residential pocket of Panglao than the Tawala strip that holds Alona Beach’s dive shops and bars. The property’s own site describes itself as Italian-run and Italian-styled, built around a free-form pool with a small cascade set in a garden rather than a beachfront pool deck. It’s a small property — 11 air-conditioned rooms in total — which puts it closer to a boutique guesthouse than a resort in scale, despite the name.

Rooms

Four room categories are listed across third-party OTAs: a 30-square-meter Family Loft with a single or queen bed, a 20-square-meter Standard Pool View Double with a queen bed, a same-sized Standard Pool View Twin with two single beds, and a 40-square-meter Suite offering a queen bed or a sofa-bed option. Rooms open onto balconies and are furnished with memory-foam mattresses, Egyptian cotton sheets, and a pillow menu — a step up in bedding specification from the standard foam-mattress-and-basic-linen setup common at Panglao’s mid-tier properties. Each room also carries an in-room safe, a minibar, and complimentary bottled water; in-room massage and nightly turndown service are available on request, alongside daily housekeeping.

Pool, Garden, and Dining

Beyond the main pool, there’s a separate children’s pool, though children under 10 aren’t permitted in either pool without an adult present. A snack bar/deli and dry-cleaning service round out the on-site amenities, and self-parking and Wi-Fi in public areas are complimentary. Vanilla Sky Restaurant, overlooking the pool and garden, serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner with an international menu alongside the kitchen’s own recipes, plus a small bar for evening drinks — a self-contained dining setup for guests who’d rather not tricycle out each night. Breakfast is included and leans toward local Filipino dishes rather than a Western buffet spread, per third-party listings, which is worth knowing if a Continental-style breakfast is what you’re expecting.

One naming note: several booking platforms list this property as “Vanilla Sky Dive Resort” rather than plain “Vanilla Sky Resort,” even though its own materials describe boat tours and diving as arranged through outside operators rather than an in-house dive center. Treat the “Dive Resort” naming on some OTAs as a branding holdover rather than confirmation of an on-site dive shop.

A Half-Day Into Panglao’s History

Vanilla Sky’s own listings mention arranging countryside tours for guests, and one worth adding to a Panglao itinerary that most beachfront properties don’t flag is the town proper’s colonial-era cluster. The Panglao Watchtower — a five-storey hexagonal coral-stone tower built in 1851 and the tallest Spanish-era military watchtower left standing in the Philippines — was declared a National Cultural Treasure in 2011 and reopened to visitors in December 2017 after earthquake-repair work. Next to it stands St. Augustine Parish Church, built mainly between 1894 and the 1920s with a portico added in 1925 and ceiling murals depicting the Seven Sacraments, and beside that the ruined façade of an older 19th-century church dated 1858. It’s a short, low-cost half-day that pairs naturally with the countryside-tour circuit Vanilla Sky already books guests onto, rather than requiring a separate excursion.

A Water Note Worth Knowing

Panglao has no river system of its own; every property on the island, Vanilla Sky included, ultimately draws water from a freshwater lens — a layer of rain-fed fresh groundwater floating on top of denser saltwater within the island’s porous limestone. Years of tourism growth have pulled harder on that lens than it easily recharges, and in some parts of the island, chloride levels in local wells now exceed the WHO’s 250 mg/L threshold for drinking water. It’s why tap water isn’t safe to drink anywhere in Panglao, Vanilla Sky’s rooms included — bottled water, which the property already provides in-room, is the practical workaround rather than an upsell.

Location and Getting There

Third-party listings put Vanilla Sky roughly 2.3 km (about 1.2 miles) from Bohol–Panglao International Airport and around 1.6 miles from Panglao’s town proper; the property’s own site states Alona Beach is a roughly 5-minute, 400-meter walk, though that distance depends on which stretch of the Alona strip is used as the reference point. Boat tours, countryside excursions, snorkeling, and diving trips are arranged through partner operators rather than an in-house dive desk, so plan on booking activities a day ahead through the front desk.

Who Should Book Here

This suits couples or small families wanting a quiet garden-and-pool base with better-than-average bedding, rather than a beachfront room in the middle of Alona’s evening noise — the Family Loft in particular fits a small family better than most Alona-strip inns. It’s a weaker fit for solo divers wanting an on-site PADI shop, or anyone who wants to walk out the door directly onto sand — Vanilla Sky’s pool, not the beach, is its main gathering space. At an OTA rating of 8.5 “Very Good” from 49 reviews, it has less review volume to draw on than the busier Alona-strip properties, worth weighing against its higher per-room amenity spec.