Dolarog Beach Resort — Hotel in El Nido

Experiences are like hairstyles, everyone's is slightly different.

In short, this place is genuinely paradise. But not for you if you are after a party.

To start, if you decide to come here, you will need to get dropped off by taxi to a place called the ocean lodge, they will then ring the resort, and the resort sends a boat to get you. You are so far out of the way here that there is no road access. There are three free boat runs back and forth to the town each day, or, for a fee you can have the boat get you at anytime.

The huts are amazing, we had the superior double room with sea view and we are 15ft from the beach. The rooms have a safe, the bed is huge, there are mosquito nets on request for the bed too; the bathroom is alot nice than the stock photographs make it look, our shower has a pebble base and it feels really nice underfoot. My only gripe here, is that the water pressure is lacking a little, but it's really not that much of a problem.

There is only a handful of rooms, and I doubt this resort can house more than 25 guests, which is fantastic; you will never have to worry about reserving the sun bed, you will likely have the pool to yourself for the majority of your time. You will never wait in line, and the staff are incredibly attentive. I actually cannot speak high enough of the staff here, their english is excellent, they are all polite, and if you want something done, it is done there and then.

I read a review about stuff being stolen here but I'll quickly dispel this myth. Our safe in the room ran out of battery while we were here, the staff came with the master key, and it requires two keys to open it, their master, and the key supplied to us, so there is no way that anyone can get into it without you being there. They are also happy to leave the master key with you. While on the topic of security, I left a pile of coins on the coffee table, and I can confirm that not a single coin was taken all week, though they were stacked neatly by day two.

The pool is water pumped from the sea, and refreshed every 24 hours, so it is not treated, and if you get a particularly sunny day, dont be surprised if there is a small amount of algae by the early evening. Next to the pool is a small bar, with a load of patio furniture, which is very nice to frequent.

The resort is completely off the grid, which has just one flaw, there are two periods during the day where power in the lodge isn't available. I think they must prioritize the power to certain areas for maintenance, because there is still wifi in the bar during these times. But it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside knowing I am not a burden to the planet while being here.

The food is great, dinner is a set menu which I was a little bit unsure about to begin with, but every meal that we have had has been delicious; and it's all stuff that I never would have thought to order myself. Breakfast and lunch are both your normal menus. Unless I have missed something, there is no room service, but honestly, the restaurant is less than 50ft from our door, so it's really not an issue.

You can get trips out to lagoons and beaches (there is 6 different trips available) directly from the reception, it is all organised for you and works out at £21-ish per person for 6/7 hours out; lunch and the hire of any equipment is covered in this cost also. You can also book massages at reception, I think it works out at just over £10 for an hour.

I should probably mention at this point that no, they are not paying me to write this,and if they were... they would probably want a refund when they realise how bad my spelling and punctuation is.

If you are as antisocial as I am, and love the quiet; I promise you will...

Dolarog, a true pet-friendly resort!||||The resort in itself is superb! It’s like a hidden gem of El Nido and the greatest thing about it is it’s truly a pet-friendly haven! What I like about it is that it’s still in the main island but gives off that exclusive feels. We stayed for 8 days in total at the beachfront villa called Lagen which is a few meters from the beach overlooking their jetti way and that awe-inspiring giant limestone directly in front of our villa. Getting to the resort is other via speedboat or their private access road from Vanilla Beach using a golf car. You know that you’ll have an excellent stay when the owner, Mr. Edu picks you up(or sometimes the son) from Vanilla beach for a more personal touch. How hospitable right? He also has a selection of Italian wines from his cellar as he is Italian, I had Chianti btw over dinner with the beach, stars and the moon as our backdrop. Truly magical! ||||The rooms are always kept clean by the staff who are also very friendly. The main Receptionist, Tata is attentive and very pleasant not to mention very informative. I would take her as my head of staff if only I could! She knows her products and knows when to recommend it, the type of staff who is not in your face all the time to promote an offer. I must say she is one of the nicest resort staff I ever come across with. ||||Food is relatively good. Home cooked and unpretentious. As with any advice when you go to a limited supply area such as El Nido, don’t get your expectations too high on having a western dish so much because obviously, you will have some issues so I only ordered I know locally sourced here like seafood or their filipino dishes like the menudo and chicken curry which are my faves! Filipino breakfast is good. You might wanna carry spare powerbanks as the resort rely on their own generator for electric supply. From 6am-9am and 12noon-6pm there is no electric power. Also, TV is not available (not sure abt other rooms though) but who needs a TV anyway? It’s not like you chose to go to El Nido and sit all day on Netflix and stay indoors duh!||||I rented a motorbike for 500/day basis and this really helped me in exploring or going out of the resort but the resort offers complimentary shuttle via their golf car to Vanilla beach for free but I wanted to leave and come back on my own time. This is also a 20 minutes walk to Maremegmeg beach by beachside access. Tricycle ride cost between 150 going to town from Vanilla beach btw. ||||Overall our experience is a great 4.5/5 with .5 leaving for improvement on the land access before the Dolarog gate. Also, I’m pretty confident even without any advertisement or active social media promotion, the resort will do just good but let me tell when I posted 1 picture of Dolarog on my socmed, people flocked my DM to ask if I was in another country. This is how beautiful the resort is but I hope that with how Millennials pick up on their next destination is mostly through social media, the resort put up an active social media especially on IG. This will surely increase their number of visitors. By the way, my dog Bailey barks that he had the best time of his life in Dolarog!||||I hope the local government pays more attention to tourism in El Nido. Please install lights on the public areas before getting into the Dolarog property as well as their national highway. We can beat other neighboring countries in terms of tourism if the local government invest on improving roads. We cannot just rely on the natural beauty...

This is a bit of a special place. The hotel is right at its own private beach. It‘s very isolated from everything else which can be nice if you don‘t want to leave the hotel at all. We wanted to go to the town some evenings and that is a bit of a challenge. You first have to take a golf car (which only runs until 10pm) and then change into a tricycle. The tricycles won‘t go directly to the hotel because the last bit of the road is too steep and winded. The other option is to walk along the beach for 20 minutes instead of using the golf car for the last bit, which we did a couple of times. It‘s not too dangerous but there are stray dogs. The food in the hotel restaurant was Italian and just ok, nothing amazing. The service was not great. Two women seem to know how to run a hotel but the rest of the staff were rather useless. They often seemed annoyed, even when we were just ordering food. We once asked about the zipline that is literally next door and they didn‘t know anything about it (price, time, how to get there). They organised a tour for us, which was great, but messed up the booking somehow so the tour guide thought we were only two people instead of four, which resulted in less food for lunch. And then they even charged us more for the tour. Our room was fine. Clean and no bugs. Yes, you can hear everything but we didn‘t mind that. The room was only made up on request though. The whole area is beautiful but there were a few things that annoyed us. So I...