1. What was the most memorable or exciting part of your holiday?

The Alona Palm Beach is a very well run beach-side resort in Panglao Island, Bohol, definitely recommend it to anyone. The setting, the management, villas, pool and the restaurant were very good - but at a price. Another highlight is Palawan. Apart from the snorkelling and diving in El Nido, a whole island is a gem - it is all still covered by rainforest, a lot more wild then even Borneo with its oil palm plantations. A Bambua resort and organic farm in Sabang - definitely a very good place to stay, when visit the Underground River and the Sabang National Park.

2. What tips would you give other travellers booking this holiday?

Do not use services of this operator if you go to Philippines!!! Philippines is not a place where a large commercial agency may help you. The Philippines is a Catholic country, very poor but very safe as well, apart from Manila which is advisable to leave as soon as possible, if you do not wish to spend your days in endless traffic jams. Also, we have found that independent travellers have had much better arrangements by being flexible. Two places I do recommend, apart from pricy but top Alona Palm Beach, are the Bambua in Palawan and Kookoosnest in Negros, which both have good management and decent websites.

3. Did you feel that your holiday benefited local people, and minimized impacts on the environment?

That's the important question: I feel that a lot of money paid to the operator did not benefit local people at all, because the operator tends to book the safe and simple commercial options, leaving all the "responsible options" aside. I wish we would stay in Bambua instead of chinese owned Daluyon in Sabang, Palawan, and I regret staying in El Nido Minilok, as it is destroying the environment by being overdeveloped and overpopulated with tourists. The tours to Taal Lake and Lobok river are two most kitsch things to do - both places are being eroded and overpolluted by tourists.

4. Finally, how would you rate your holiday overall?

Despite of the ridiculously expensive but useless itinerary of this operator, I have found Philippines a fascinating place to visit. It is the only pity that unlike in Malaysia, there are not a lot of animals to see. But it is still quite wild and in many ways primitive, and Philippinos are a great nation, and there are still a lot of places of real natural beauty: numerous islands and reefs, expanses of rainforest, mountains and volcanoes, rivers and waterfalls and many others.

Read the operator's response here:

We take all feedback from our clients very seriously and were grateful that Mr Zvoznikov took the opportunity to write to us on return from his holiday to the Philippines to highlight some of his concerns. We fully investigated his points and duly responded to him personally at length.

In light of Mr Zvoznikov’s comments regarding the visit to the Lobok River, we have paid a recent visit to the area and have decided to exclude it from our suggested itinerary. It is unfortunate that the area in the last couple of years has responded to the demands of package and mass tourism and is therefore no longer relevant to our programme.

We are however still promoting tours to Taal Volcano and Lake. This is a remarkable sight of natural interest and for this reason attracts large numbers of visitors. Furthermore, the government’s National Ecotourism Strategy has identified Taal as a key ecotourism site and it is considered an example of good practice. Tourism has meant that a number of local villagers can earn a direct living from visitors buying drinks and using their horses to explore the volcanic landscape rather than move their families away from their homes to find work in Manila. For more adventurous clients with an interest in volcanoes, we would recommend exploring Mount Pinatubu which is still within reach of Manila to render it suitable for a day trip.

We will always aim to ensure that staff are employed from local communities and that they are given tangible financial and social benefits from their employer such as employment contracts, sick pay and access to training schemes. We were sorry that Mr Zvoznikov did not enjoy his stay at Daluyon due to its foreign ownership. At the time he was the first of our clients to stay here and we advised him that it had not undergone our own personal inspection. Since then a full inspection has taken place and further clients have stayed here and have rated it highly. The majority of hotels in the Philippines do have foreign ownership including the Bambua and Kookoo’s Nest which Mr Zvoznikov cites as alternative recommendations.

We prefer to recommend smaller, character properties particularly at the beaches and we are fortunate that we have an abundance to choose from in the Philippines, so that we do not have to rely on properties targeted at a mass market. We were therefore surprised to receive such negative feedback about El Nido Miniloc. With around 50 rooms, this is the largest of our preferred beach properties but still relatively small in comparison to the development on Mactan Island for example. The higher room inventory does of course increase tourist traffic to the region but its efforts to protect the environment and provide a progressive approach to staff development and employment are award-winning.

Whilst it is possible to organise travel to the Philippines independently, which perhaps would have been more suited to Mr Zvoznikov on this occasion, our clients recognise the value of our specialists’ expert advice and first hand experience of travelling through the Philippines and appreciate the security of having their arrangements in the hands of a fully-bonded and experienced tour operator. Our Philippines specialists have vast experience of not only travelling in the country but also of living here and are familiar with the logistics of getting around an extensive archipelago where travel arrangements are subject to last minute boat or air schedule changes as well as the vagaries of tropical weather. Should we need to respond to itinerary changes at short notice, our clients have the services of their local guide and the 24-hour support of our local agent in the Philippines.