The ideal place to experience the excellent service and the famous hospitality of the Filipino people. Local and European management, modern facilities, yet maintaining the country’s tropical and relaxed style. Located on a 5,000 sqm coastal property surrounded by reef full of abundant marine life, and designed to satisfy the taste of all divers, especially underwater photographers with highest expectations. Own camera/ video room with 18 airgun stations. Easy access from / to Manila. Boat rides included in the dive package. Top class guides / spotters ! Spectacular house reef especially for night dives. SPA. Only 17 rooms in 3 different categories. Nearest location to the best dive spots ! New we have on top of the resort a SPA with a beautiful view !
We were recommended by a couple of friends and we thank them very much. Buceo Anilao is a place where people come back to because they love it so much. All the Staff are amazing and it does not take long for you to be surrounded by friends. We met several guests that have been going there for several years. It does not take much to realize why. We hope to be back soon.
This is a secluded place with not much around. Ideal for relaxation and disconnection from the rest of the world. The hotel has wi-fi in the main areas and even worked in our room is case you need to be connected. You get greeted by Dave with his great smile and the girls with fresh drinks and an aluminum bottle for your water (thank you for not using single use plastic). Your bags will be taken upstairs for you and your dive gear back downstairs if they were not on a separate bag. If you sign up for the full board be prepared to eat for 2. We changed to a la carte after our first meal. It is all very delicious, but we could not finish our meal and do not like wasting food. You set up your gear the first time and then you just need to analyze your tanks before each dive. Everything is done for you. The gear is set up and taken to the boat. All you have to do is to have a great time. Dive guides are AMAZING! We found m ore than 26 species of nudibranchs in a single dive!!! There is even an infinity pool so you can enjoy the sunset when you are not diving.
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Date of stay: January 2024
Value
Location
Service
Trip type: Traveled as a couple
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from Dood Santos, Marketing at Buceo Anilao Beach & Dive Resort
Responded Feb 19, 2024
Hi Evelyn! Thank you for the wonderful review. We do our best to give all our guests the absolute best and genuinely hospitable experience! We're counting that you will be one of our repeat guests as well too! We look forward to your next visit! :)
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We had a great week at Buceo! Great View - that means lots of stairs, but you get used to it. Food good. You do have to get used to the fact that you are ordering your next meal at the curent meal you are eating. Staff are all very friendly! Great diving!!. Small groups with full service for your dive gear. We very much enjoyed walking into the little village next door and interacting with the local villagers. The only sugggeation I would have is maybe 1x weekly have the staff do a clean up of the each area surronding the resort??
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Date of stay: February 2020
Location
Service
Sleep Quality
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from Martin N, Director of Sales at Buceo Anilao Beach & Dive Resort
Responded Feb 18, 2020
Hi nOntario Thank you for the nice review and the kind words. Indeed, like almost all hotels in Anilao we are built on a hill so it means lot of stairs. Make sure to indicate when booking if you need a lower room and we try our best ! But of course no guarantee. True, we let guest order food in advance to avoid long waiting times. Especially if you dive 4 x a day :-) As for the clean up, we in fact clean up the beach front very regularly but depending on the wind, the plastic and trash comes back. Unfortunately. But i will bring up this topic again with the management Again, thank you and hope to have you back soon in Buceo Anilao :-) Martin, in the name of the whole Team
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Very friendly and helpful. Diving in small groups (not more than 3 per guide). We had the same guide for 6 days, 4 dives a day. Nice resort, like being at the end of the world : cannot be reached by car; a 5 minutes boat trip is required. They make you feel as if you are part of a big family, without forcing anyone into anything. The housereef is amazing, certainly for nightdives. There is a seperate room for camera storage, maintenance, battery loading stations etc. One small downside : it is located on a steep hill, and if you stay in the highest located room, it takes you 111 steps to reach it from the restaurant. Whether that's an issue or not depends on your physical condition :-).
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Date of stay: February 2020
Rooms
Service
Sleep Quality
Room Tip:Â The higher upon the hill the wider the view, but the more steps to climb to reach it.
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from Martin N, Director of Sales at Buceo Anilao Beach & Dive Resort
Responded Feb 15, 2020
Dear Eksmp thank you very much for the nice review and kind words. We are of course happy to read it. Indeed we always try to dive in small group (maximum is 1 guide to 4 divers, but normally the ratio is even less. This enables the guest to truly see the amazing underwater world Anilao has to offer. And true, like almost all resorts in Anilao we are built on a hill so make sure when you do the reservation ask for a lower room (if available and possible) Again, thank you for the visit and hope to have you back soon with us Martin, in the name of the whole Team
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Surprised why they have a high rating ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ So happy and excited to visit this hotel and to our dismay.
Such a pathetic hotel. The resort doesn't even deserve a single star. Dirty bedsheets dirty rooms. The staff were clueless on important informations. Always saying No to everything. Im sorry maam/sir, Not available, not possible, not allowed, My god!
Please train your staff and the admin! poorly done! Late replies on emails had to send several reminders to get answer to my questions and confirmation of payment. This was really annoying. The restaurant was not good at all. The choice of food was very limited and it just didn't taste good. Some too salty.. Some no flavour at all.
Will never ever recommend this hotel. They have to improve on the service, training the staff, attention to details if they will put 4 star hotel rating. Omg not even close to 1 star.
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Date of stay: October 2020Trip type: Traveled with friends
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from Dood Santos, Marketing at Buceo Anilao Beach & Dive Resort
Responded Nov 8, 2020
Hi Tour762845. We apologize for any inconveniences we may have caused you during your booking and stay at our resort. To better improve ourselves, may we know the dates of your stay and the room type you have stayed in? The negative review really comes as a surprise to us since we ask our guests for feedback during their stay at the resort as well. Sorry if we had overlooked your comments while staying with us. We thank you for your feedback as this will help improve all aspects of our service. We look forward to hearing from you!
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Buceo is a high quality dive resort, tucked away on the hills of Mabini and only a 2.5 hour drive from downtown Manila (make sure to take the "new" bypass). Location of Buceo is the best among all resorts in Anialo with most dive sites within a 10 minute boat ride from the resort and many as close as 5 minutes away.
What we really love is the perdonalized approach and the quality of the DMs. We usually dive as a family and often get assigned our "own" boat without having to pay extra. You feel welcome here and well looked after. Price/quality of the villas is good compared to many of the other resorts in the area. Basic but spacious, clean and comfortable.
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Date of stay: December 2022
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Room Tip:Â Rooms lower down the hill are most quiet and less stairs :)
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from , Owner at Buceo Anilao Beach & Dive Resort
Responded Dec 28, 2022
Thank you very much for your kind words. Glad you enjoyed ! martin, in the name of the whole staff
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The view from the balcony was breathtaking no matter what room or what time of the day. The landscaping and the layout of the resort itself was so aesthetic and was definitely instagram worthy whether you take a picture at the pool area, balconies, spa area, bar, etc. I loved the recycled and reused Christmas decorations! I appreciate the personal touch in every corner of the resort. They had great accommodations! It was easy breezy from the transportation they provided, to the instructions on the COVID 19 protocol requirements, to the staff providing the service you need, and all the way to the payment. I really appreciated how strict the resort was with following through the COVID 18 health and safety protocols because I felt so safe to relax and unwind knowing their resort is safe. The activities were super fun as well, although we only snorkeled. Our group saw an array of wildlife around the marine sanctuaries. Who knew such a gem existed within two hours from Manila! The night life was great too, we had such a great time drinking and hanging out with our friends and the staff. They had a great array of drinks and delicious food as well (the frozen mojito and their sisig are definitely a must try). Will definitely go back again!
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Date of stay: November 2020
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from Dood Santos, Marketing at Buceo Anilao Beach & Dive Resort
Responded Nov 17, 2020
Hi Vanessa! Thank you so much for the amazing review! We're so happy that you enjoyed your weekend with us! I'm sure it won't be the last! Hope to see you and your friends soon!
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I discovered this resort by accident and let me tell you why his resort deserves the No 1 spot in the entire region:
I found myself in Manila with an option to either sitesee the city or find a dive site close by for a quick visit, one that avoided planes and travel to a different island. What appeared was this incredible and unheard-of location (to the outside world) called Anilao. I escaped the city with my small carry-on, still wearing my suit and got into the car heading to Anilao, to this quiet (not flashy on the net) place called Buceo Anilao.
Run by a veteran dive instructor and his family, what sets this place apart is the warmth and care they give you. I stayed in their Delux room, which has three beds (could fit an entire family). The rooms were spotless, with a large bathroom and a wonderful shower. The AC was incredibly powerful, a relief from the blistering noon weather. They have a lovely restaurant that overlooks the ocean and a menu that has something for all. For people like me with dietary restrictions, they helped in all ways. The bar is the centre of the evening, where guests and divers recount their travels, with a range of drinks and innocuous cocktails, some named after guests (Michael Fox, did not venture to try that one!). A beautiful pool with a view occupied the little children and young couples. The pool was spotless and cleaned regularly, an important signal about the rest of the resort. The highlight of my room was the balcony that had this incredible view of the entire ocean.
The diving was spectacular. I was starting to lose interest after a whole series of dives where the coral was bleaching or the visibility was poor.
Anilao was incredible! A wide range of coral, beautiful fish, and small critters - people from all over the world diving here to photograph them. I could not get enough, even after a night dive and 5 day dives.
You know the quality of the dive resort not by looking at their marketing (this resort has very little) ir their reception (or even their resort) but of how they treat diving.
The dive shop, especially where they were refilling tanks, gives you the first glimpse of their competence and equipment maintenance. Here, they treated this with the utmost competence. They have a large room only for taking care of your underwater cameras and gear. I have never seen anything like this before.
I was must fortunate to get Elmar as my dive master, who, along with Dave (owner) has been diving in this region for over 35 years. I have rarely encountered such skills before.
Its actually an hour's drive from the city (once you leave it) with excellent roads. There is no reason why you should not visit Buceo Anilao.
My only regret is this: I wish my wife and kids were with me. That would have made it perfect. I will correct this picture the next time I am in Manila.
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Date of stay: June 2022
Value
Rooms
Service
Room Tip:Â Higher rooms have incredible views.
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from Martin Nussbaumer, Sales at Buceo Anilao Beach & Dive Resort
Responded Jun 20, 2022
Thank you very much for your kind words and am / we are glad you enjoyed so much. This is always our goal ! I made sure to inform Dave and Elmar about it also. Again, thank you so much and hope to have you again soon with us in Buceo Anilao. Martin, in the name of the whole Team
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I wish I could have given the resort 5 stars, but there is some small things that I keeps me from doing that. I would absolutly recomend it, and I hope to be back some day
First of all, you go there for fantastic diving - and that's what you get. The boat crew, the dive guides and everyone else makes this into a dive resort that is well worth visiting - for diving that is. The operation runes smoothly without any hiccups.
They offer free nitrox for return customers - super nice.
My dive guide, Kevin, knows where to look and has eagle eyes so he could spot the smallest nudibranches from far away.
The resort is charming and has a size that makes everything cozy. But if you're not fit, it can be a hike to get up to the top most rooms. They organize your airport pickup and get you back to the airport as well - very convinient.
But as I stated, they have some room for improvement. They have a nice sign at the door to your room stating that this room has been cleaned and sanitized for your security or something like that. I do think this is a leftover thing from the covid years, but anyway. But anyway, sign or no sign - you wouldn't expect the glass in the bathroom that often is used for your toothbrush to still contain toothpaste from the previous customer. I didn't care too much about that - the second glass looked clean. But it raise a question of how clean and sanitized the rooms actually are.
The second thing I would like to mention is the restaurant - this comes mostly down to my taste and preferences, so others might have a totally different view. I'm not impressed about what the kitchen is able to make.
The third thing is not really the resort's fault, but It's something they can help fix. The beach to the resort is filled with plastic waste - they could do a better job at cleaning that up. Some strategically placed trashcans could maybe also entice both the local kids to clean up a bit, as well as the boat crew and us guests.
But the bigger issue is that sometimes big piles of trash ends up floating around the boats at some of the dive sites. The boat crew could easily do a small cleanup using pool nest or something like that while they are waiting for the divers to return - and us the divers and guides could pick up what we see at the bottom.
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Date of stay: October 2024
Value
Rooms
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Sleep Quality
Trip type: Traveled solo
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from Dood Santos, Marketing at Buceo Anilao Beach & Dive Resort
Responded Nov 5, 2024
Hi Edvard! First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to write an honest review of our resort. We're glad that you enjoyed your diving holiday with us! We're always happy to please our divers! As for the cleanliness of the room, we sincerely apologize for this incident. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We'll address this issue and pay better attention to cleaning each room. Lastly, the plastic waste that can be found in the water and the shore, we're actually constantly cleaning our shoreline everyday. We have both in-house and outside help to pick up trash infront of the resort, but everyday with the drop of the tide and depending on the weather there's some trash once again. We'll keep cleaning though! As for the floating trash around our boats, you are absolutely right! We should definitely clean up the trash floating near our boats. We'll do this immediately. Thank you for the suggestion! We'll also have more bins available around the surrounding community and will have more cleanup efforts to develop the culture of cleanliness among the locals. Thanks again for the wonderful review and we can't wait to have you back with us! - Buceo Anilao Family 🤗
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Stayed at this resort for two weeks in November 2022 for some fantastic diving as part of a group of divers. I did 41 dives during my stay, with an average dive time of 63 min.
The dive guide was very good at finding all kind of interesting small creatures - witch there is a abundance of at this place. We had one dive with what we considered to strong current and when we told the guide that, they made sure that the rest of the dives was in better conditions.
The boat crew was very helpful when we where getting ready to go in the water or coming back up to the boat. . We did not have to carry anything ourselves to or from the boat, that was also handled by the boat crew and the guides. This was a smooth operation.
The resort has a super camera room for setting up, charging and maintaining camera gear.
Rooms are nice and clean. If you are lucky to get one of the bungalows highest up, you have a small hike every time you go to the room, but are reworded by a beautiful view. And all resort staff are super nice, helpful and smiles all the time.
Not everything was grate thou. Our trip had all meals included. The lunch and dinner was buffet. After two weeks of dry and boring chicken with the occasional dry pork in between, well I would say that the kitchen staff didn't impress me one bit. They have a À la carte menu so there are options. The deserts was how ever often quite nice.
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Date of stay: November 2022
Value
Location
Service
Trip type: Traveled with friends
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Response from Martin Nussbaumer, Sales at Buceo Anilao Beach & Dive Resort
Responded Dec 19, 2022
Thank you very much for your knd words and the fantastic comments. Regarding the food I will let our resort manager know. thank you for your honest feedback, we try to improve. have a good day, Martin, in the name of the whole team
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Overall the diving was good the set up was great and made for divers with good boats and effecient staff and well maintained area for tank fills, washing and drying areas and huge camera room and storage. Our guide Joy was very good and eyes like a hawk, I did notice there were never any guide briefings fron any guides and a case of drop in water and dive. They do have made up plans for each dive but never used. Just concentrating on the dive operation it ticks the boxes. Yes, there are lots of steps so you have been warned.. Beach is also an extra point for boats and often a collection point for rubbish with wind direction. Rooms are spacious and clean with open views and a huge shower. Staff are all friendly if you take time to interact with them. Transfers to airport were a breeze. A good pool to swim and relax around. Breakfast is pretty basic though and it could be improved and a cleaning of the dining area and regular washing of table mats might help with the hassle of flies. Ordering food when you have just eaten was always difficult but guess it needs to be defrosted and prepped.. it was ok most the time. Beware of weekends with locals from Manila flock and all standards slip. We were pretty disgusted one night when after a dive a group descended to the dining area in wet swim gear and only a towel and sat down to eat with managent saying nothing.. I guess they pay the bills when overseas guest are not there. We and other couples were not impressed as other resorts would have ensured a certain standard was maintained for all. Our plans changed a few days prior and we stopped diving, we noticed a distinct change from management after that as I guess we were not paying the $$$ Saying that we felt we were under constant observation at the bar with our drinks by management and dive staff who frequent one side of the bar at night. After that we were glad we departed a day early. But these were our views and highlights
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Date of stay: July 2024Trip type: Traveled as a couple
Room Tip:Â Avoid weekend diving..,lots more boats and divers visiting and standards slip
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Dumaguete City, Philippines5 contributions3 helpful votes
Hi, in the resort we do not change NZ dollar, but I think its possible in the airport in Manila. Otherwise, am not sure. its not a very common currency to change here, so if ever much better USD. Hope this helps you ? if not, please send me a mail to my contacts in the website. thanks, Martin
Dumaguete City, Philippines5 contributions3 helpful votes
Hi Gerard
Thank you for your message.
Best is to send an inquiry through our website so I can answer to the inquiry directly.
Check out our website. I can not post it here due to the policy of Trip Advisor
Thank you very much
Martin
Dumaguete City, Philippines5 contributions3 helpful votes
Hi
Thank you for your message. Just saw it now unfortunately
Best is to contact us through our website as I qm not allowed to post our website here for policy reason
Thank you very much
Martin
Hi Brimmeryyc, depends on what kind of diving you are looking for between your few options; Anilao is extremely good for macro photography with tones of unique critters, water temperature recently was at a low 23 degrees and the nightlife and vibrancy is the direct opposite of Puerto Galera (a very very quiet and peaceful getaway).
We were recently at Buceo and we were given the best services throughout our stay, very attentive dive guides (very good spotters as we were treated with sights like hairy broken back shrimp, mantis carry eggs and all). And they had a camera room that is a big ++ for camera welders like me and my friends!
Rooms were very spacious, clean and carry a gorgeous view (no tv thou so entertainment like movies on iPad and books would be suggested).
View by the infinity pool was amazing I would say good for relaxing after a day of dives!
Our stay was made even more amazing with the friendly staff and the international cuisine at Buceo. We will definitely be back again!
Cheers
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