Hilton Cebu Beach, Mactan

Hilton Cebu sits on Punta Engano, the headland at the northeast tip of Mactan that gathers several of the island flagship resorts. It is the polished end of the island, quieter and more spread out than the dense Maribago strip down the coast, and it shares the one real natural advantage Mactan has, the Hilutungan Channel that runs past this corner and keeps the water clearer and cooler than the tired shallows on the south and west. As a base it is hard to fault. You are ten to fifteen minutes from the airport, the service is the full international standard, and the boats for the best days are easy to arrange from here.

Set your expectations on the sand itself, though, and the place makes sense. The beachfront is a groomed resort strip on a wide reef flat, and that flat drains at low tide to ankle deep water over coral and seagrass. That is not something any resort can engineer away, it is the nature of this coast, which is exactly why a flagship like this leans on its pools. A day here is really two days in one. The morning belongs to the lounger, the pool and a slow breakfast, and the swimming day belongs to the boat that carries you out to the marine sanctuaries where the water is deep and gin clear.

So the honest read is to come to Hilton Cebu for the base, the comfort and the calm of the headland, and not for a wide swimming beach. If you want to wade into deep water straight off open sand, Mactan is not that island and you should look to Boracay or to Palawan. If you want a quiet, well run resort corner from which to dive, snorkel and island hop the reefs of the channel, Punta Engano is the most polished shore on Mactan, and the boats more than make up for the modest beach.