Review: Banwa Private Island, Philippines

Banwa Private Island is one of the strangest properties I’ve ever stayed at.  Not because it’s bad.  Not because it’s good.  But because it’s one of the only places I’ve ever been to where I actively found myself rooting for it, often against the evidence in front of me.

This is also a case study in the economics of how to do things spectacularly wrong.  It originally launched at around $100,000 per night for a full island buyout, boldly testing the old theory that a fool and his money are soon parted.  Thankfully, sanity eventually entered the room and they relaunched with per-villa pricing.  Which is how I ended up here, ready to be confused in person.

Getting there

For those of you travelling with children and thinking, “this sounds lovely, but is there a hard mode?” Banwa has you covered.  For us, coming from England, it took almost two days to arrive.

You fly into Puerto Princesa, which is one of those small airports where your luggage arrives before you have time to wipe your arse, get met airside, into a car with WiFi and water but, oddly, no snacks.  Then comes the journey.  About 2.5 hours in the car, followed by a 25–30 minute boat.  It’s not painful, but it’s long enough to make you feel like you’ve earned whatever is waiting at the end of it.  Which, in our case, was not much.  Of course, if you’d prefer to skip all that and have an allergy to your own money, you can take a helicopter for $15,000 one way, or a private seaplane from Manila for over $30,000.

And when you arrive, you do get that feeling.  It feels like the edge of the world.  Like, where exactly is everyone?  Do they all know something I don’t?  Or am I discovering something the masses have yet to?  It turns out the latter.  This is one of those rare parts of the world where the only tourists you can see are when you look in the mirror.  Eurgh, you mean to tell me that I’m a tourist too!?  The shame.

And worse, the arrival to the island was extremely underwhelming and felt badly thought through.  For once, I found myself missing the usual army of people clapping for no reason.

The welcome amenities were four coconut profiteroles slowly surrendering to the laws of thermodynamics in a room with the air conditioning turned off.  The minibar was empty.  They didn’t even have menus in the room.  It felt like we turned up to a friends house a few hours before the party began and they didn’t even have the caviar and ketamine out yet.  Savages.  For a place that had proactively set up a WhatsApp group pre-arrival, it was surprising how many obvious things hadn’t been handled in advance.

And that feeling, at least initially, sticks.

Setting

I’ve stayed at more luxury beach resorts than is probably healthy, so take this seriously when I say it: Banwa may have the best weather of anywhere I’ve ever been.  Around 27C, no suffocating humidity, no rain, a gentle breeze (although if you’re on the northern side of the island at this time of year, it’s more of a proper breeze), and sunshine on permanent contract.  Clouds occasionally drift in, purely to protect my pasty, Irish skin.  Then around 4pm, it somehow gets better.  The temperature softens, the island glows orange, the breeze becomes your air conditioning unit.  At night we didn’t even use the air conditioning, just a fan.

And it’s not just the weather that’s amazing.  They claimed to be mosquito free, and my mosquito-magnet blood can confirm this appears to be true because, remarkably, not a single bite.  It felt revolutionary, like the discovery of medicine.  No, more important than that: deep-fried Mars bars.  Finally, I was free of my nemesis: the shitheads that are mosquitoes.  I could go outside again.  I could stare at that big, beautiful thing called the sun without any protection.  I could walk around in my underwear at any time and it’s fine.  Well, fine for me.  The staff may eventually submit a formal complaint.

And all of this is set against a backdrop that is, quite simply, superb.  The island is beautiful.  It feels extremely remote, even if there are islands nearby and you can see lights at night, they’re far away to not distract or annoy.  It’s not completely cut off from the world, just removed enough that the world stops mattering.

It feels like you’ve come to the end of the world.  The kinda place your parents would talk/drone on about before mass tourism arrived and everyone started queueing to photograph the same sunset.  I’m sure tourists exist somewhere nearby, but all we saw were locals.  Where else do you get that these days?  And one particularly nice touch: 100% of the staff are Filipino.

Early morning, when the tide is out, it looks like you could walk to Manila, the beach is extended so much.  There are no bikes or buggies because the island is that small, but it never feels tiny once you’re on it.  There’s enough space, enough corners, enough little garden pockets to stop it ever feeling cramped.

It’s not quite barefoot luxury, mind you.  The pathways are a mixture of concrete and wood and can get damn hot underfoot.  But the island is beautifully maintained, full of bright flowers, lush greenery, and a beach that mostly lets you walk the full perimeter.  Although you have to wear protection to go in the water, cos of jellyfish, snails (yeah, really) and stingrays, but do they have any for the kids?  No.  Well, not right away anyway.  

And I haven’t even touched on the conservation side.  Not just in how the island has been built and operates more sustainably and their Aquos Foundation, but in the wider philosophy.  No motorised water sports within the reef, serious protection of the marine environment, and a location within a marine protected area.

Facilities

There are two sides to Banwa.  As I will come to, there are many, many fine points.  And then there’s the hard product, which at times I could not believe existed at this level.  The interior designer was either calling in sick every day for their 10 year build or was Nicholas Cage from Longlegs.  

I don’t know if the move from exclusive-use buyout to individual villas disrupted the original vision, but the main area makes no sense at all.  Not aesthetically, metaphorically, literally, spiritually, practically, emotionally, or even erotically.

Special mention for this monstrosity.

A lot of private island buyouts can run well north of $40,000 per night, and ironically the rooms are rarely much to look at.  The whole premise is that you’re buying into the space, the privacy, the exclusivity, the facilities, the freedom.  The rooms just need to be good enough, because the main area is where you’re expected to spend your time.  Not here.  Not by a long shot.  It’s small, oddly designed, soulless, cheap.  This should be the focus of the property, instead it’s some chairs near the kitchen, with the toilets right beside it and a tiny pool that no one will ever use.  You will want to walk through it, rather than towards.  

Sitting down for our first meal, positioned right besides the open kitchen as the other tables were taken, and suffering in the heat and slumped on lousy, cheap chairs, I was wondering what the hell we had signed up for.  The restaurant, bar, pool and terrace – a large, open area with sofas, and some high stools and several table that suffers from a complete lack of cohesion.  We only went here when they would set up lunches on the beach.  Aesthetically, they land somewhere between two-star Miami and a low-budget porno film set that didn’t secure its funding, so later had to be moved back to that Miami hotel.  

But elsewhere, Banwa redeems itself.  If you actually run through the facilities list, there’s plenty here: a padel court, tennis and basketball court, juice bar, table tennis, yoga pavilion, helipad, dive centre, boutique, and perhaps the nicest surprise of all, a lovely nine-hole golf course built beautifully into the island.

All of that is pretty good.

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Spa / Gym

The gym is fine.  Treadmill, a couple of machines, some dumbbells, and a Pilates machine that looked like it had been vacated from the storage room for not paying its bills.

The spa is a single treatment room overlooking a basketball court, which is not a sentence I expected to write.  Lucie and I each had a treatment, and the whole thing was deeply odd.  Straight onto the bed, no discussion, no consultation, not even the courtesy of asking how much pressure we wanted.  I had to choose my own oil from labelled bottles on the floor like I was doing a blind wine tasting in a squat position.  Weirdly, the massage itself was good.  But it’s like going to a restaurant where they just bring you whatever they want.  That’s how gonorrhoea began.

After I mentioned it to the manager, we were invited back and they corrected everything.  Proper consultation, foot scrub, proper setup, the experience it should have been in the first place.  Which I commend.  But does it make it somehow worse that they got it so wrong initially when they clearly knew exactly how to do it properly?

Room

There are six villas, each slightly elevated by the beach to offer privacy.  Ours, South Two (cos it had two bedrooms and….well, you can guess where it was found on the island) was private, surrounded by greenery, with a great outdoor setup.  Pool, hot tub, lots of space.  The outdoor areas are genuinely excellent.  Everything else… less so.

There’s a lack of detail, a lack of luxury finishes, and a surprising amount of “that’ll do.” And not the charming kind, like at the end of Babe.  The first thing you notice is a curtain of shells hanging in front of an open, see-through storage area that looks like absolutely no effort went into it.  Less design feature, more somewhere to store the screams of past guests.  And that, sadly, is the general theme for the villas.  They are perfectly, practically fine, entirely comfortable, but aesthetically they have the look of a Swiss clinic where you go to be euthanised.

It is, unfortunately, exactly as per the website.  There is always that little hope a room will be better in person, that the photographer was simply having a bad day.  Sadly not.  The living area was my personal nemesis.  Cramped, oddly laid out, and fundamentally joyless.  Even my five-year-old daughter wandered in and immediately offered the Pulitzer Prize winning review: “this room is small.” It’s a narrow room with a four-seater dining table squeezed too close to a sofa facing the TV.  She ain’t wrong.

One of the giveaways of real luxury are the tiny details, like how a minibar is presented.  Here, it looks like someone got in an argument with their wife and she threw all his shit in the corner of the room.  The Smeg machines, cups, saucers, all just left out with no thought at all.  You’re only spending meaningful time in here if there’s an invasion.  And even then, I’d consider taking my chances outside.  What if you die in this room?  Does that mean you have to come back and haunt it?  You’re doomed to an eternity.  Of this?!  There really is a hell.  

It’s not that anything is offensively bad.  It’s that almost nothing is particularly good.

Lighting is aggressive.  Curtains don’t quite do their job  The amount of ambient lighting in that room is a killer with all the light switches have this glowing bright blue around them.  Air conditioning is not the silence kind.  There’s a general lack of detail and care that you just don’t expect at this level.  Nothing is terrible, but very little is right.

The bedroom, graciously, has storage everywhere, which is useful, but presented with all the finesse of a storage unit.  The bedrooms are identical, with exception that only one has the hot tub, and neither have a bath, so if you came with another couple, that could be rather intimate.

The best villa on the island is the final one-bedroom built, and it shows.  Evidently designed by someone who enjoys life.  Ours felt more like it was designed by the interior designer of a portable toilet.  The newer one felt five-star Filipino.  This isn’t a subtle difference, it’s a completely different standard.  The final villa was designed by a local whose parents were involved in Amanpulo, and it’s leagues above the rest.  I’m not one of those people who insists everything has to feel “local”.  I love Cheval Blanc Randheli, which is about as Maldivian as wearing a beret, throwing a garlic necklace on and shouting “oh là là.” But here, all but one of the villas have no sense of place or even any style.  They just feel like someone gave up.  Perhaps “divorced dad who’s not expecting the kids over” chic was the brief.

Do the rooms ruin the stay?  No.

Do they bother you?  Yes.

And that’s enough.

Service

This is where Banwa saves itself.  Just as you’re settling into the idea that this might not be very good, something shifts.

The start was shaky.  No way around that.  It felt underprepared and disjointed.  Cos the service thereafter was so wonderful, I cannot comprehend how they screwed up the welcome so badly.  Was the clocks going forward an hour that hard to cope with?   We gave feedback.  They listened.  They acted.  By day two, it felt like an entirely different place.

And when it clicked, it is exceptional.  The GM is ex-Aman, and you mix that with the notoriously wonderful Filipino and it’s another level.  I have been all around the world and when it comes to hospitality, Japanese and Philippines always stood out.  I thought that the first time I stayed in these countries well over 10 years ago and still feel it now.  Apologies countries I didn’t mention.  But let’s be honest there wasn’t exactly gonna be Germans was it?

You walk along the beach and someone appears with cold towels.  Blankets and toys materialising when the kids sat down.  Staff running after them to make sure they were entertained.  You come back from a boat ride and there’s an army of umbrellas waiting.  Dinner set up privately on the beach with lights.  Gifts for the kids every night.  It’s an endless list of exceptional service.  

It reminded me a bit of Laucala in the way things just happen without you ever opening your wallet; how they want to deliver and impress you.  It’s called Banwa Private Island and at times it was our private island, because we were the only guests there.  That sense of freedom is rare.  Do what you want, when you want, with no timetable dictating your day.  I always talk about the appeal of exclusive-use properties, and Banwa gives you much of that feeling without needing to do a buy out.

They consistently found ways to amaze, even down to the goodbye, where someone was at the airport to take us through security and even take our luggage directly onto the plane.

Food

The food was excellent.  You either have a proper à la carte menu to choose from, or the chef comes to speak with you, suggests a full lunch or dinner menu, and tailors it around what you actually want.  I far prefer that to being trapped by the same static menu every day.  We had themed menus ranging from Spanish, Japanese, local cuisine and more, and the whole concept really works for me.  They’re not exactly shopping in the discount aisle either.  Foie gras, wagyu, lobster, caviar, all making regular appearances.

They were also wonderfully generous.  Fridges constantly stocked, snacks appearing out of nowhere, food turning up on activities and boat rides.  Banwa is the antithesis of a weight loss drug.

Activities

And then there’s the freedom.  No rigid schedules.  No structure unless you want it.  Do things when you feel like it, not because a timetable says so.  Once again: exclusive use energy.

The activities lean heavily into the natural environment.  Snorkelling, diving, boat trips, hikes, river cruises, and beekeeping.   We saw tens of thousands of flying foxes (fruit bats) on a nearby island, we saw how the locals caught crabs, we had the worst attempt ever at hitting eco-friendly golf balls into the ocean.  There was more to do than we had time.

We went on a hike to another inhabited island, arriving via a boat that felt like it had been borrowed from James Bond, when the captain casually turned it into a car and drove it onto the shore.  There was a car waiting to take us to the start of the hike.  I decided to walk through the village instead.  Naturally, the car then followed us the entire time, just in case I changed my mind about walking.  At the top, someone was waiting with a cooler full of drinks.  Then came the cold towels, which seem to follow you everywhere you go.  Then, back on the boat, snacks.  Not just snacks, my snacks.  It’s completely ridiculous, entirely unnecessary, and exactly what luxury should be.

You can tell how underused some of these activities are, though.  That hike hadn’t been done in almost two years.  And that is part of the charm.

There’s also whale shark nearby, which really requires a seaplane trip to get to.  Alas, the season had literally begun on the day I arrived, so it felt too risky to waste a day trying to swim with them.  Next time.

Kids Friendly

No kids club.  Instead, you get something better.  Or more intense, depending on your perspective.

The island nurse essentially becomes 24/7 childcare.  And then everyone else on the island seems to chip in.  Painting, coconut art, pizza making, bead making, swimming (even though she can’t swim).  Isabelle had what can only be described as an entourage.  At one point she was dipping a paintbrush while someone cleaned it and handed it back like she was a tiny, tyrannical artist.

They follow them everywhere.  Not in a creepy way.  In a way you know they’re not going to kill themselves by doing something stupid, like stepping on a snail.

The Good

• Food

The Bad

• Design
• An amateur feel in places

The Luxurious

• Service
• Setting
• Activities
• Exclusivity
• Privacy
• Value for money

Conclusion

Banwa is one of the hardest places I’ve ever had to review, because so much of it is excellent.  The staff are superb.  The activities are great.  The setting is beautiful.  The island feels wonderfully private.  Their conservation efforts deserve real credit.  There is a lot here to admire.

But the hard product is weak.  There is no elegant way to dress that up.  By day three I was still walking around staring at the main area in disbelief.  I still don’t know what they were thinking.  That bar alone deserves its own apology letter.  It’s so low-end it almost is like someone sabotage the place and try to ruin it.  The villas need work.  The main area needs taking behind the shed and put out of its misery.  The details, the finishes, the cohesion, all of it needs attention.  It feels like two different properties sharing the same island.

And that is what makes Banwa frustrating.  Because this could be incredible.  Banwa is not lacking in potential, it is drowning in it.  With the team they have and the setting they’re sitting on, it should be one of the best places in the world.  Instead, it’s one of the places I’ve rooted for the most.  Everything needed to be exceptional is already there, it just hasn’t been put together properly.

Usually if somewhere gets it wrong, I point to bad management or ownership.  And then write an extremely snarky review.  Here, they seem have all the will to get it right, but just haven’t managed it yet.  Here, I wanted them to figure it out.  I have never wanted a place to figure it out more.  When I first arrived, I wondered who this place was for, because it did not feel aimed at the luxury market.  The room style, the weak welcome, that baffling main area.  But the longer I stayed, the more I appreciated it.  The more I wished we were staying for longer.   

If you love marine life, privacy, warm service, strong food, and being somewhere that still feels untouched by tourism, there is something very special here.  If you need immaculate design, polished finishes, and immediate wow-factor, there are easier answers elsewhere.

Lucie and I both agreed it was the most improved stay we’ve ever had.  My first impression was a one star review.  By the end, part of me desperately wanted to give it five stars.  I know I can’t.

But, call me crazy: I would go back.  If we can stomach the flight, and overlook the aesthetics, you should too.  And that probably tells you more than any score ever could.  

But they’re still getting one.