A Philippines dive trip lives or dies on the order you do things in. Pick the wrong region for your travel window and you’ll end up in a typhoon. Book the international flight before pinning down the inter-island leg and you’ll discover that the flights you want sell out months ahead in peak season. Pack a 5 mm wetsuit and you’ll cook on every dive. The country runs over 7,000 islands, and the diving is decentralized — no single hub solves it for you.
This checklist walks the trip in the order it actually has to happen. Nine steps, from the first big region decision down to the no-fly window before you fly home. Use it as a planning spine and skip the steps that don’t apply.
Step 1 — Pick a window, then match a region to the season
The Philippines has two regional weather systems running on opposite calendars. The west — Palawan, Manila, the West Visayas — sits in the amihan dry season from roughly November through May. The east — Southern Leyte, Bicol, Surigao — gets calmer water from June through October. Pick the region first and you’ll fight the weather. Pick the window first and the region falls out.
A quick filter to start with.
Diving in December–April? Default west: Palawan, Anilao, Cebu, Bohol, Dumaguete, Mindoro.
March–May is the prime overlap month — water at its warmest, visibility at its best, the Tubbataha liveaboard season is open, and Donsol whale shark numbers are still solid.
Diving in June–September? Look east — Southern Leyte for whale sharks, Anda on Bohol’s east coast (much drier than Panglao in southwest monsoon), and Bicol for muck. October is the swing month and the riskiest for typhoons across the country.
The Philippine Dive Guide lays out the regional split in detail, and the regional hub pages — Palawan, Bohol, Cebu, Negros, Mindoro, and Bicol — give you the dive-site shortlist for each.
When should you start planning a Philippines dive trip?
Four to six months out is the realistic floor for peak season (December–May) if you want decent flight prices and liveaboard cabins that aren’t already booked. Tubbataha typically sells out 8–12 months ahead — if that’s the trip, plan a year out and book the cabin first, then build the rest of the itinerary around the departure date. For shoulder-season trips at a single resort, six to eight weeks is usually enough.
Step 2 — Choose the trip shape: resort base, island-hop, or liveaboard
Three trip shapes cover almost everything Filipino diving offers. Each one changes every other decision downstream.
Resort base. Pick one destination, dive it for 7–10 days. Lowest logistics, deepest knowledge of one site, best for couples and divers chasing macro. Anilao and Dauin are the classic single-base picks for macro; Panglao is the easiest single base for variety.
Island-hop. Two or three destinations stitched together over 14–21 days. Higher logistics overhead — every transfer is a half-day at minimum — but you get genuinely different diving in one trip. The Visayas string (Cebu → Negros → Bohol) is the most common combination because it’s all reachable by ferry without flying domestically.
Liveaboard. The only way to dive Tubbataha and the cleanest way to do Apo Reef and northern Palawan’s offshore wrecks. Boat lives 6–8 days; you do 3–4 dives a day with no transfers, no packing in between. Costs more per day than a resort, but the dive count and remoteness usually justify it.
Browse liveaboards in the Philippines on Liveaboard.com and cross-check vessel listings on Divebooker — both platforms list most boats and pricing varies. The full set of vessels in the directory sits at the liveaboards category page.
Step 3 — Book the international flight first, the inter-island leg second
Manila (NAIA) and Cebu (Mactan-Cebu) are the two main international gateways. Cebu is the better entry point for almost any Visayas itinerary — Bohol, Negros, Malapascua, Moalboal, and Siquijor are all reachable from Cebu without another flight. Manila makes sense for Anilao, Palawan, and the northern routes.
Book the international leg first because the price spread is bigger. Once that’s locked, slot in the domestic flight or ferry.
The three main domestic carriers are Philippine Airlines, Cebu Pacific, and AirAsia — between them they cover almost every dive-relevant route. AirSWIFT and Sunlight Air both serve the El Nido strip and are worth checking specifically for that leg.
The inter-island ferry network is dense, especially around Cebu. For ferry routes — Batangas to Puerto Galera, Cebu to Bohol, Mindoro to Coron — you can compare schedules and book on Bookaway or 12Go.
Leave a buffer day between the international flight and the first dive. Manila and Cebu traffic eats time, and a long-haul flight followed by an immediate boat ride is a fast path to fatigue and dehydration — neither mixes well with a check-out dive on day one.
Step 4 — Lock in dive operators and accommodation together
In most Philippine dive towns the operator and the accommodation are separate businesses, but pickups, lunch, and tank fills run on the same daily rhythm. Book them at the same time so the transfers line up. Most operators have a list of preferred resorts within walking or short-tricycle distance — ask, and use that list as your starting point.
For accommodation, compare resorts on Agoda — coverage is dense across the dive towns and it’s usually the easiest cancellation policy. The full directory of dive operators is at scuba diving centers and dive-attached resorts at dive resorts and accommodations.
For any operator you’re shortlisting, check three things before locking it in: the year of the most recent Google review, whether their social media has posted in the last 60 days, and whether the equipment in their photos looks like it’s been serviced this decade. Anything older than that is a flag.
Some operators take a deposit on confirmation, others hold the spot on a written booking alone — ask which they need. If you’re at the smaller or larger end of standard sizing, also ask what BCDs and exposure suits they actually stock; rental fits in dive towns skew to the local middle, and it’s worth knowing before you arrive.
Step 5 — Sort dive insurance and trip paperwork
Dive insurance is the line item most divers skip and most regret skipping. A chamber ride in the Philippines is a five-figure bill if you’re paying out of pocket. The two standard options for international divers are DAN and DiveAssure. Both maintain working relationships with the chamber network across the country, so the choice usually comes down to which membership tier and cancellation cover fits the trip length and the dive type. SafetyWing is the broader travel-insurance complement for the non-diving days, the lost luggage, and the trip cancellation.
The Philippines paperwork itself is light. Most Western and ASEAN passports get 30 days visa-free under Executive Order 408 — confirm your nationality on the Bureau of Immigration site. The passport must be valid for at least six months beyond your departure date. Immigration also wants proof of onward travel; a return ticket clears it.
The one trip-specific bit of admin is eTravel — a free online registration the Bureau of Immigration runs for every arriving passenger. Register at etravel.gov.ph. It opens 72 hours before your flight and produces a QR code you’ll need at the airport. Skip nothing here; the QR is checked on the way in.
Do you need dive insurance for the Philippines?
You are not legally required to carry it, but every reputable operator will check whether you do, and most liveaboards require proof of cover before you board. Decompression incidents are rare on Philippine recreational profiles, but the country has chambers in only a handful of cities — Manila, Cebu, and Subic among them — and a transfer from a remote site adds zeros to the bill. The cost of a year of basic dive cover is roughly the cost of a single chamber session.
Step 6 — Decide what to pack and what to rent
Water temperature runs 25–30°C across the year. A 3 mm shorty or full suit is the ceiling — most divers do fine in a rashguard plus a 3 mm in the cooler months and a rashguard alone in May–September. Skip the 5 mm. You’ll cook. When in doubt, always ask the local shop historically what water temperature was on the month of your visit.
Flying in with a full kit is doable but tight. Philippine Airlines economy fares typically include 20 kg checked plus 7 kg cabin; the low-cost carriers — Cebu Pacific and AirAsia — run leaner allowances and police them strictly at the gate. A BCD, regs, fins, mask, computer, exposure suit, and SMB will run 12–15 kg if you’re disciplined. The simpler move is usually to buy a chunk of extra checked allowance up front and mix dive gear with personal items in the same bag — that’s often cheaper than the dedicated sport-equipment add-on, and far cheaper than the overweight fee at the gate.
The one item to bring if you have it: your dive computer. Most operators rent computers but charge for them separately — they’re rarely bundled into the basic BCD/regs/fins package — and the rental units are usually older models without nitrox tracking, with menus you’ll spend the first dive learning. Own one, and the rest of the kit is genuinely negotiable.
Can you rent dive gear in the Philippines?
Yes, almost universally. Every dive operator on the directory rents a full set — BCD, regs, mask, fins, weights — and most include it in package pricing. Quality varies. Mid-range and high-end operators in Anilao, Dauin, and Panglao maintain serviced kit; budget operators in remote towns sometimes don’t. If you have a reg set you trust, bring it. If you don’t dive often enough to own one, rent at the operator and budget an extra day to confirm fit before the first real dive.
Step 7 — Plan how money actually moves on the ground
The Philippine peso is closed-currency — you can’t realistically buy it abroad. Bring a small amount of US dollars or euros for the airport, then withdraw pesos from an ATM in Manila or Cebu on arrival. ATM fees are around PHP 250 (~USD $4.20) per withdrawal so pull a larger amount each time. BPI and BDO are the most reliable networks.
Dive payments split predictably. Resort and operator deposits typically go on card via the booking. The remainder — fun dives, gear rental, nitrox fills, marine park fees, tips — is almost always settled in cash on the last day. Marine park fees in particular (Tubbataha, Apo Island, Verde Island, Balicasag) are cash-only at most operators, in pesos, paid at the dive shop. Budget PHP 5,000–10,000 (~USD $83–165) in cash for the typical week of dive-related extras.
Cards work in city hotels and bigger resorts. They don’t work at most island dive shops, sari-sari stores, or tricycle drivers. Plan for a daily cash float of PHP 2,000–3,000 (~USD $33–50) and refill at an ATM whenever you’re in a town that has one.
Step 8 — Two weeks out: refresher and dive medical
If your last dive was more than six months ago, book a pool refresher at a local dive shop before you leave. Skipping it costs you the first dive of the trip on a Philippine boat — operators will (rightly) put you through a check-out dive in shallow water before you do anything fun. Better to fix the buoyancy at home. PADI’s ReActivate course is the standard refresher product.
In the same window: Check that any prescription medication is in original packaging, and get a dive medical signed off if you have any tickable items on the standard PADI/RSTC questionnaire. The medical clears in a day at most dive-friendly GPs but is a serious problem if you arrive without it and need one.
The last small thing: a current logbook. Operators increasingly ask for recent dives on file before signing you up for the deeper or more advanced sites — Tubbataha, Monad/Kimud, Apo Reef. Bring the digital log on your phone or pull a printed page if you log on paper.
Step 9 — On the ground and the no-fly window home
First day on the boat is a check-out dive at a shallow site. Don’t fight it. Use it to confirm weighting, regulator function, and that the rental fins fit. Day two is the real start of the trip.
The non-negotiable on the back end is the no-fly window. DAN and PADI guidance is 12 hours minimum after a single dive and 18 hours after multiple dives. The safe default for trip planning is 24 hours — that is the gap between your last dive and your wheels-up flight. Plan the last dive day accordingly.
If you’re flying out Saturday morning, your last dive is Thursday afternoon, not Friday. The day in between is for surface activities — Klook covers most of the land-side bookings: island tours, snorkel-only trips, transfers — and that’s how the day after diving usually fills.
For the inter-island leg back to the international airport, ferries from Bohol, Mindoro, or Romblon to Cebu or Batangas are bookable on Bookaway or 12Go. Build the same buffer day at the end of the trip that you built at the start — domestic delays are common, and missing the international flight because the flight from Coron was weather-grounded is the single most preventable trip-ender.
Where to go from here
Start at the Philippine Dive Guide for the regional and seasonal breakdown, then drop into the destination guide for whichever region you’ve shortlisted in Step 1. For the operator side, scuba diving centers, dive resorts and accommodations, and liveaboards are the three category archives most planning sessions move between.
The single most useful thing you can do next: pick the travel window in your calendar, then open the regional hub for the matching season and start a shortlist of three operators. Steps 2–9 are easier when Step 1 is on paper.
