Portofino Resort: Carrying on a Family tradition

An outing at the beach with the family or just a simple dinner by the sea is one of the must-dos especially during this hot season. The beach alone is already a perfect getaway from the busy life, and, according to many studies, staying here even for a while relaxes not only the body but also the mind.

Over the years, Cebu has become famous because of its beaches catering not only to the locals but also to tourists from the different parts of the world.

And the new addition to its already hundreds of beach resorts is the Portofino Resort in Mactan Island, which lies just a few kilometers to the southeast of Cebu island.

Portofino Resort (formerly Mar Y Cielo) has been in the business since 2003, and has attracted guests from all walks of life. On weekends, the 10.5-hectare place is filled with families enjoying the beach, couples luxuriating in the reclined chairs, or diners having their fill at the resort’s restaurant overlooking the Olango Island.

The resort’s main thrust is to give the best service it can to its customers, thus its owner Manny Zamora has continued putting more facilities and further focused on the place’s maintenance primarily for customer satisfaction.

"I am very keen about maintenance," said Zamora, while adding that aside from that he is also set to refurbish, upgrade, increase the quality of food, services and the facilities they already have here.

Zamora revealed that he also plans to place at the resort’s entrance, where the 30 controversial decorative lampposts where installed for the ASEAN Summit, a man-made waterfalls and a pond to greet its guests. The lampposts, he added, will remain pending the cases involving them before the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas.

To ensure success of this business, Zamora revealed that  "portion of the earnings is put back for the facilities."

And for the most-discriminating taste, the resort has tapped the services of chef Manuel "Manny" Espina from the old Magellan Hotel, a Zamora-owned business that was destroyed by a fire several years ago.

And although Portofino Resort is giving quality services, it does not ask too much from its customers. Espina said they have separate rates for their foreign guests, for the locals and for the balikbayans, so everyone gets to enjoy the place at a cost just within their means. The entrance fee (for the beach alone; the use of the swimming pool has a separate fee), for example, is P75 per head during the weekdays, and P100 for weekends. Thus, the place is best suited for families who need a weekend get-together or for working people who want to relax and be pampered at a price just within their means.