About Bohol Cebu Travel — Who We Are and Why We Built This

Maayong adlaw! Welcome to our corner of the internet.

We started covering Bohol in 2010. Not as outsiders who came for a long weekend and called it research — but as Bolhanons, people whose roots run through this island’s limestone hills and coastal towns. Our mother is from Mahayag in San Miguel. Our father is from Guindulman, where the southern hills taper down to the Bohol Sea. The island isn’t a destination for us. It’s where our family is from.

Back then, the Chocolate Hills had a single viewpoint with a crumbling deck. Alona Beach had no paved road to the dive shops. Anda was known almost exclusively to fisherfolk and a handful of divers who’d heard about it by word of mouth. The ferry from Cebu to Tagbilaran ran twice a day.

We wrote about it anyway — because Bohol was already extraordinary, and almost nobody outside the Philippines knew it yet.

Fifteen years later, bohol-philippines.com has grown into the most comprehensive independent English-language travel resource for Bohol and Cebu. This page explains who we are, how we work, and why we think that independence matters for travelers who want honest information.

What We Cover — and Why Just These Two Islands

Bohol. 4,821 km², 47 municipalities, 75 islands. The Chocolate Hills, the Philippine tarsier, the Loboc River, the reef wall at Balicasag Island, the colonial coral-stone churches of Baclayon, and the quiet east coast at Anda that most tourists still haven’t found. We’ve covered every municipality and tracked the island through its quiet years and its peak seasons. Every guide on this site is written with that depth of familiarity behind it.

Cebu. Bohol’s closest neighbor and the most common entry point for international travelers to the Visayas. Mactan Airport, Cebu City, the sardine run at Moalboal, the whale sharks at Oslob, Malapascua, Bantayan Island, and the ferry routes connecting them all. We cover Cebu because most Bohol trips involve at least a few days in Cebu — and because the two islands together form the most complete Philippine island-hopping itinerary available without a domestic flight.

We don’t cover every island in the Philippines. We go deep on two. That focus is intentional.

What We Bring to This That Most Travel Sites Can’t

Our family network spans the island. A sister and her family are based across Panglao, Tagbilaran, and Talibon right now. We have relatives in towns that most travel guides don’t mention by name. That’s not a marketing claim — it’s why our guides include things like the difference between the Getafe and Tagbilaran ferry routes, which side of Anda has the better cave pool access, and what the Chocolate Hills actually look like at 7 AM before the tour buses arrive.

One of us is a licensed architect with over three decades of professional experience across residential, commercial, and heritage projects. That background shapes how we write about Bohol’s colonial churches in particular. When we cover Baclayon Church or the heritage circuit through the southern municipalities, we’re reading those coral-stone walls the way a trained eye reads a building — the structural logic, the centuries of repair and survival, what makes them remarkable beyond their age.

Some of us currently live in Cebu City, which gives the site genuine dual-island perspective: the ferry pier logistics, the jeepney routes, the best timing for popular spots from a base on the Cebu side.

Our Editorial Standards

Every guide on this site is written to answer the question a traveler would actually ask — not the question that’s easiest to rank for.

When we write about getting from Cebu to Bohol by ferry, we include the last departure time, what happens when you miss it, which operator is the best value in economy class, and whether the Getafe route is worth considering if you’re heading straight to Carmen. We don’t stop at “take the OceanJet to Tagbilaran.”

When we write about where to stay in Panglao, we explain the difference between a beachfront room and a back-row room at the same property — the price gap, the tradeoff, and when each makes sense.

When we write about the Chocolate Hills, we tell you to get there at 7 AM before the bus tours arrive, not because it sounds good to say, but because we’ve been there at 7 AM and at 11 AM, and the difference is not a small one.

We do not accept payment to feature hotels, tours, or services. Listings appear because they’re relevant and well-reviewed, not because an operator reached out. Our internal link structure reflects the actual quality of content, not commercial arrangements.

How We Make Money — Full Disclosure

Running a site this size requires revenue. We earn it through affiliate commissions from booking platforms — GetYourGuide, Klook, Viator, Booking.com, and Agoda. When you click a booking link on this site and complete a reservation, we earn a small percentage of the transaction at no additional cost to you.

This is a standard model for independent travel publishers, and we think it’s worth being explicit about.

What this means in practice: We recommend platforms that consistently earn good reviews from travelers — not the ones that offer the highest commission rates. We compare platforms where relevant and say when one is better than another for a specific booking. We don’t embed booking links into content where they don’t belong.

What it doesn’t mean: We cannot see who books through our links, we don’t receive lists of customer names or contact details from any platform, and we have no financial relationship with individual hotels, tour operators, or transport companies featured in our guides.

Our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use cover these arrangements in full.

The Site Architecture — How to Navigate 15 Years of Content

We’ve organized bohol-philippines.com into a hierarchy designed to match how travelers actually plan a trip.

If you’re at the beginning: Start with the Bohol Travel Guide or the Cebu Travel Guide. These are the master hubs for each island — every destination, every activity category, every season, linked from a single page.

If you’re past the “should I go” stage: Move into the destination-specific guides — Panglao Island, Anda, Tagbilaran City, Loboc, Chocolate Hills. Each hub aggregates everything we’ve written about that area.

If you’re ready to book: The Tours hub and Hotels hub filter by experience type and budget. The Essentials hub covers the practical logistics — SIMs, ferries, airport transfers, packing, budget.

If you’re the kind of person who wants to know everything: 77 Things to Do in Bohol is the most complete activity inventory we’ve built. It’s a long read. It’s worth it.

Errors, Updates, and Feedback

Travel information changes. Ferry schedules shift. Hotels close. Prices move. We update guides when we become aware of significant changes, but we can’t verify every detail on every page in real time.

If you find an error — a wrong price, a closed venue, a route that no longer exists — we want to know. Use the Contact page and be specific: the page URL, the section, and what’s changed. We read every message and update pages when corrections are verified.

Have a specific travel topic you’d like us to cover? Reach out. A hidden waterfall you’ve heard about, a festival worth documenting, a DIY route someone should write up properly — our family and local network often leads us to places that aren’t in standard guidebooks, and your tip might become the next guide we write. We take full responsibility for our content and will correct mistakes immediately when they’re flagged.

A Note on Independent Travel Media

There are thousands of travel websites. Most of them cover the same destinations in the same way, because the search-engine reward for doing so is consistent and predictable.

We’ve taken a different approach: go deep on a specific place, build genuine expertise, and write guides that are actually useful to someone who’s planning a real trip. Bohol is a place that rewards that kind of attention. It has more to offer than any single article can capture — which is why we’ve written hundreds of them over fifteen years and still find new angles.

If this site has helped you plan a trip to Bohol or Cebu, that’s what it was built for.

© 2010–2026 Bohol Cebu Travel. All rights reserved.