Leyte Dive Resort — Hotel in Leyte

I absolutely enjoyed my stay at Leyte Dive Resort.|Before the practical points, I have to say how nice it was to meet the people there. A small family owned business, with native flair and Swiss efficiency is the perfect combination. It took me no time at all to make myself comfortable.|I could have been an old friend just catching up on laughter.|I had the pleasure of great luck on the whaleshark trip, and the combination of shore dives and boat dives. Sogod Bay is great diving without the crowds. Visibility is quite good and it is quite clean (except at the Pier for night diving, but if you make it past the trash on the shore, what you will find for underwater creatures is rewarding).|Definitely made some great memories, and laughed a lot even underwater :-)|A small resort with personal service.|Excellent. And it does not even have a sandy beach or a pool.||Some green points...|As much as appreciated to have toiletries in the bathroom, please limit the use of single use items... a bottle of refillable 2-1 or 3-1 shampoo/conditioner/soap, is better that all the single non recyclable packagings. |Please encourage guests to bring their reusable water bottles, which may be refilled in your restaurant, which would decrease the plastic bottles usage.|And you are small enough to eliminate plastic straws and stirrers.|There are reusable bamboo straws or metal straws. For stirring the hot drinks on the boat, spoons do just fine, or the little wooden stirrers.|(Some bigger resorts have successfully managed a full bar without the single use plastic items).||The Philippines are a precious natural treasure, and every pro-active step helps.||And the rest... the email communication was efficient, and the transport arranged was on time and reliable.|I was assigned Room 1, which I found to be clean and comfortable.|The window may not be opened, so I kept my door opened much of the day... and glad it’s that kind of place... where one may do so.|The whole resort is clean and well kept... whatever washed up on the shore is manageable to pick up and put in the waste bin.|I rented a full set of diving equipment, and it all worked out just fine.|If I ever decide to do the DiveMaster course, I would highly consider the German instructor that operates there.|I personally had early mornings and early nights on this trip, but certainly there is some nightlife of the local kind... from next door, to a...

Unfortunately, we never made it to the dive as we were left at the airport with no one to pick us up. We had originally booked the transfer service (which we found out after bookimg it was highly priced compared to other transfer services within the Philippines) once we had realised this we emailed the property to ask if there was another option to get there. The property responded by cancelling our transfers. This is not what we wanted or asked for and so I responded and explained there was a miscommunication and we would still like the transfer service. After this, the property completely ignored us. I sent a further 3 emails and had no response. I emailed to inform that we were on our way to the airport and to please confirm that we were going to be picked up. We had no response. Once we arrived (at night) we were stranded at the airport, luckily there were some very nice policemen who helped us check into a nearby hotel and also informed us it would be too dangerous for us to travel down to southern Leyte alone. The policemen managed to phone the dive resort to which the property told them we had cancelled. Once we had arrived at the last minute hotel we tried three times to call the dive resort and sort out the miscommunication - we had no luck. I then sent another email to request transfers the next day and I had no response. This utterly ruined part of our trip and the lack of communication is terrible. We were hugely disappointed with the unprofessionalism of this place, they knew we were 2 young girls and they intentionally left us stranded in an unknown place. As the room had already been paid for on booking.com it seemed they didn't care if we would turn up or not as they already had the money. There was no communication from them at all to see if we would still be needing the room or to apologise for mix up. I would absolutely not recommend this place....

Service: everyone is helpful and friendly. Willing to answer questions or help out. A/C worked fine, rooms were clean, and the hot water shower worked well! There is no WiFi in the resort, also.

However I give the service only 3 stars because they tried to increase the price we agreed upon/I was told things cost for food and scooter rental when I paid at the end. For example, I was told dinner cost p300 when ordering. Chopsuey cost p500! They tried to claim I rented a scooter for my entire stay- I did not. They relented when I reminded them of what we agreed upon. But be aware, they did not offer discounts for multiple days of scooter rentals.

Note that due to the typhoon, they only have two rooms available. Dives and whale shark tours are limited because of this. Dives cost p2350 with gear rental- which is standard in the area. I somewhat regret not going somewhere with more divers and better dive sites because with only me and the DM, it felt like I missed out on more amazing sites- the area in front of their resort is average.

The location is quiet and farther away from a lot of things with only one resto nearby. You will need to get transportation anywhere else. The resto next door has karaoke every day and there will be singing from 3pm until 6pm. It’s not too loud, but you can hear it inside the room closest to the resto.

Overall, a nice stay but it felt frustrating to see the cost of food after thinking it was only p300. A suggestion for them would be to simply have a menu to display or some form of written tally for the guests to track. I ate 4 meals and paid over p2000 for food. Quite a bit of money when I only drank water and ate simple things like chopsuey or...