Turquoise Bay Dive & Beach Resort

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Quick Verdict

Turquoise Bay Dive & Beach Resort is the best all-inclusive dive value on Roatan, and I don’t think it’s especially close. This is a 26-room resort spread across 30 acres on the island’s remote northeast shore — the only dive operation working this stretch of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef — and the all-inclusive package here is a genuine one: all meals, unlimited national liquors, and three boat dives a day, with a typical seven-night package bundling 15 boat dives plus a night dive. Rates start around $149 per person per night on double occupancy, which for a full-board dive package is remarkable arithmetic.

What you’re giving up is choice and polish. There is exactly one restaurant, Udurau. Premium imported spirits aren’t part of the standard package. The rooms are clean, functional and well-kept rather than luxurious, and a good number of them sit up a hillside with stairs. You are also 30 minutes from the airport with nothing walkable outside the gate, which means you’re committing to the resort for the week. If you dive, all of that is a reasonable price for uncrowded reef and a boat that isn’t fighting five other operators for a mooring. If you don’t dive, West Bay will make you happier.

Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Three boat dives per day included, 15 dives plus a night dive on a standard 7-night package	Remote northeast-shore location — 30 minutes from the airport, nothing walkable nearby
Sole dive operator on this part of the north shore, so sites are genuinely uncrowded	Only one restaurant (Udurau) for every meal of your stay
Small — 26 rooms on 30 acres, so it never feels busy	”Unlimited national liquors” means local brands; imported premium spirits aren’t standard
Private 500-foot white-sand beach on a protected, swimmable bay	Many rooms are hillside with stair access — poor for limited mobility
Airport shuttle included, which is rare on Roatan	Simple, functional finishes — a dive lodge, not a boutique hotel
Roughly $149 per person per night including diving — outstanding value	Non-divers get far less out of the package than divers do

The Resort at a Glance

Location	Turquoise Bay, northeast shore, Roatan, Honduras
Rooms	26, across a 30-acre property
Room categories	Ocean View and Hillside rooms; standard rooms around 250 sq ft with private entrances and shared balconies
Restaurants	1 — Udurau (buffet with à-la-carte options), plus poolside patio service
Bars	3
Pools	1 signature lagoon-style pool
Beach	Private 500-foot white-sand beach on a protected bay
Dive center	On-site PADI 5-Star Instructor Development center; boats at 8:45am, 10:45am and 2pm, 6–12 divers per boat
Airport	Roatán International (RTB) — about 30 minutes; French Harbour about 20 minutes
Adults-only?	No — families welcome, and there is a kids’ menu
All-inclusive status	True all-inclusive; diving is bundled into the package rate

Rooms and Suites

There are 26 rooms here, which is the single most important number on this page. It sets the tone for everything: the pace of check-in, how quickly the bar staff learn what you drink, how many people are on the dive boat with you. Rooms are split broadly between Ocean View and Hillside categories, with standard rooms running about 250 square feet, private entrances, and balconies that are typically shared with the neighboring unit.

The Ocean View rooms are the ones to book. You’re looking straight down over the bay, which on this side of the island means water that is genuinely turquoise most days rather than a marketing adjective. The Hillside rooms sit further up the slope with more of a treetop-and-glimpse-of-sea outlook. They’re cheaper, and the view from higher up is arguably more dramatic, but the trade is stairs — a real, repeated, several-times-a-day set of stairs. Guests consistently flag this. If anyone in your party has knee, hip or mobility issues, say so at booking and insist on a low-lying room in writing.

Inside, the standard is clean and functional rather than plush: tiled floors, air conditioning, wooden accents, a fridge, and housekeeping that leaves towel art and fresh flowers on the bed. Recent guests are consistently positive about cleanliness and maintenance — “everything in working order and well kept” is a recurring theme — while being equally clear that nobody comes here for the interior design. The resort also markets over-the-water bungalow accommodation, but doesn’t publish full specs for it; confirm exactly what you’re booking before paying a premium.

Our pick: an Ocean View room on the lower part of the property. You get the view, you skip the stair climb after a day of three dives, and the price gap over a Hillside room is small relative to what you’re already spending on the package.

Food and Dining

Udurau Restaurant is the whole dining program. It’s a buffet-forward operation with à-la-carte options, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, with an ocean-view patio that is where you’ll actually want to eat. The kitchen leans Caribbean and Latin American with international standards alongside — grilled fish, rice and beans, stewed chicken, pasta, a salad line, fresh fruit. There’s a kids’ menu, and snack stations fill the gaps around the dive schedule, which matters more than it sounds when you’re back from a 2pm boat at 4:30 wanting food.

One restaurant for a seven-night stay is a genuine constraint. The kitchen rotates, but by night five you’ll have seen the rotation. If dinner variety matters, Infinity Bay on West Bay — where you can walk out to a dozen independent restaurants — is the better structural fit.

Bars and drinks: three bars, with poolside and beach service where most of the day happens. The official inclusions list is specific and so am I: unlimited national liquors are included — regional rum, local beer such as Salva Vida and Port Royal, mixers, cocktails and soft drinks. Imported premium spirits are not what “national liquors” means. Our guide to all-inclusive alcohol explains why this distinction costs people money more often than any other inclusion detail.

Food quality verdict: solid, generous, unpretentious, and well above what the price point implies — but singular. Score it 7/10 for quality and 5/10 for variety. Nobody leaves Turquoise Bay talking about the food; nobody leaves complaining about it either.

Beach and Pools

The beach is a private 500-foot stretch of white sand fronting a protected bay, dressed with palapas, hammocks and loungers. The protection is the point: unlike the open north-shore beaches, this bay stays calm enough for genuinely comfortable swimming, kayaking and paddleboarding on most days. Kayaks and stand-up paddleboards are complimentary and there’s a mangrove system nearby that the resort runs kayak tours into — one of the better free activities on the island.

Snorkeling off the beach is decent rather than spectacular; the reef that makes this location special is a short boat ride out. For world-class fins-on-from-the-sand snorkeling, Mayan Princess on West Bay is the better address. What you get here instead is a beach with almost nobody on it — worth a great deal on an island that receives cruise ships.

The pool is a single lagoon-style pool with loungers, towel service and poolside food and drink — the social center between dive boats, and genuinely convivial with only 26 rooms’ worth of guests. There is one pool and it’s perfectly good; don’t expect a multi-level complex.

Activities and Entertainment

Diving is the program. The on-site PADI 5-Star Instructor Development center runs boats at 8:45am, 10:45am and 2pm, with groups of six to twelve divers and a divemaster on every dive. Water temperature sits between roughly 78°F and 84°F year-round with visibility typically 60 to 100 feet. Because this is the only operation on this stretch of coast, the moorings are yours — no jostling with day-boats out of West End, no reef that’s been finned over by four groups before you arrive. That exclusivity is the actual product here, and it’s what justifies choosing a remote resort over a convenient one.

Recreational dives, certification courses, wreck dives and shark dives are all available through the shop, night diving features in the standard seven-night package, and non-divers can snorkel from the boats.

Dry-land activities included with the package are broader than you’d expect from a 26-room property: complimentary kayaks and paddleboards, kayak mangrove tours, horseback riding, botanical and eco tours, island tours, beach volleyball, and cabana use. Golf and specialized excursions are offered too, though pricing for those isn’t published — confirm before you commit.

Evenings are quiet. There is bar service, there’s day-long entertainment as part of the package, and there is the specific social ecosystem of a dive resort, which means most of the bar is comparing what they saw on the 2pm dive and going to bed by ten. If your idea of a resort night involves a theater show and a disco, book somewhere else — Henry Morgan on West Bay runs a far bigger nightly entertainment operation.

Kids: families are welcome and there’s a kids’ menu, but there is no dedicated kids’ club. This works well for families with teens who can dive or snorkel and badly for families with toddlers who need a program.

Spa and Wellness

The Spa Palapa offers massage and treatments in an open-air beachfront setting, at extra cost — it is not part of the all-inclusive package, and prices aren’t published, so ask at check-in. There’s no thermal circuit, sauna suite or hydrotherapy; for a 26-room resort, a massage palapa with a sea breeze is the right scale of spa. After three tank dives it’s the one paid extra I’d budget for without hesitation.

What’s Included vs Extra

Included	Extra cost
All meals at Udurau Restaurant (breakfast, lunch, dinner)	Spa Palapa massages and treatments
Snack stations and kids’ menu	Imported/premium spirits (only national liquors are unlimited)
Unlimited national liquors, beer, cocktails, soft drinks	Golf and specialized off-site excursions
Three boat dives per day on dive packages (typically 15 dives + 1 night dive over 7 nights)	Dive certification courses beyond package inclusions — confirm rates
Divemaster guiding on every dive	Some à-la-carte menu upgrades beyond standard offerings
Airport and ferry shuttle service	Gratuities (see our tipping guide)
Free Wi-Fi property-wide, free parking	Honduras departure taxes on international flights
Kayaks, paddleboards, mangrove kayak tours	Nitrox and gear rental beyond standard — confirm at booking
Horseback riding, botanical tours, eco tours, island tours
Pool, private beach, palapas, loungers, towel service
Daily housekeeping, concierge

All-inclusive status: TRUE all-inclusive. Turquoise Bay is sold as an all-inclusive package by default, not as an optional upgrade — a meaningful distinction on Roatan, where several properties (including Infinity Bay) sell all-inclusive as an add-on. The one caveat to hold onto is the “national liquors” wording on drinks.

Pricing and How to Book

Turquoise Bay prices primarily as a per-person dive package rather than a per-room nightly rate, which makes it look expensive next to a room-only rate and cheap once you do the arithmetic on what a week of diving costs separately.

Season	Typical rate (2 people, per night, all-inclusive)	Notes
Low (September–October)	$260–300	7-night all-inclusive packages have been offered from around $1,300 per person; September is the quietest month
Shoulder (May–August, November)	$290–340	Summer is popular with families and dive groups; book earlier than you think
High (December–April)	$330–380+	Northern-hemisphere winter is peak; DEMA-show promotions have started under $1,350 per person for 7 nights all-inclusive winter travel
Holidays (Christmas, New Year, Easter)	$380+	Minimum stays and premium pricing apply

The benchmark to hold in your head is roughly $149 per person per night on double occupancy, all-inclusive, diving included. On West Bay you’d pay comparable money for the room and board alone, then add $400–600 per person for a week of two-tank dives on top. That gap is the entire argument for this resort.

Best time to book: Roatan’s dive-resort inventory is small and Turquoise Bay has 26 rooms, so the high-season weeks in January and February genuinely sell out six to nine months ahead. The best pricing appears twice a year — the September/October low season, and the DEMA-show promotional window in the late fall for winter travel. If you’re flexible, September delivers the lowest rates of the year, with the honest caveat that it sits inside Atlantic hurricane season.

Where to book: because the value here is in the dive package rather than the room, booking direct with the resort or through a specialist dive-travel agency usually beats the OTAs, which tend to price the room without the dive component. Compare the direct package against OTA rates before you commit — and confirm exactly how many dives are included, since that’s the variable that moves the real cost. Rates change with season and availability — confirm the current rate and exactly what’s included before you book.

Check latest prices and compare Roatan resorts →

Compared to Nearby Resorts

Mayan Princess Beach & Dive Resort is the direct comparison, and the choice is essentially geography. It’s a true all-inclusive with its own PADI 5-star shop, but sits on West Bay Beach — the island’s best sand, with restaurants and shops on your doorstep and reef you can snorkel from the beach — and it’s busier, especially on cruise days. Divers who want quiet: Turquoise Bay. Divers traveling with non-divers: Mayan Princess.

Fantasy Island Beach Resort, Dive & Marina is the volume alternative — 160 rooms on a private island off French Harbour, cheaper per night, three private beaches, and a much bigger, more anonymous operation. Fantasy Island wins on price and on beach acreage; Turquoise Bay wins comprehensively on intimacy, service consistency and the quality of the diving included.

Henry Morgan Beach Resort is the budget West Bay option at 238 rooms, and it’s a genuinely different holiday: buffet-scale catering, nightly entertainment, tour groups, and a party at the pool. If your group includes people who’d be miserable at a quiet 26-room dive lodge, that’s your compromise property. See the full lineup in our Roatan destination guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Turquoise Bay actually all-inclusive?

Yes — genuinely so. Unlike several Roatan properties that sell all-inclusive as an optional add-on package, Turquoise Bay’s standard product is an all-inclusive package covering all meals at Udurau, snacks, unlimited national liquors and bar service, the pool and private beach, complimentary kayaks and land activities, Wi-Fi, and airport shuttle service. Dive packages bundle three boat dives a day on top. The two things to read carefully: only national (local) spirits are unlimited, and spa treatments are extra.

How many dives are included?

The dive packages include three boat dives per day, with boats departing at 8:45am, 10:45am and 2pm. A standard seven-night package has been marketed with 15 boat dives plus a night dive included, guided by a divemaster in groups of six to twelve. Confirm your specific package’s dive count in writing when you book, because this is the variable that changes the value equation most.

Is Roatan safe? What about Honduras’s reputation?

Honduras and Roatan need to be assessed separately. Mainland Honduras has one of the highest violent-crime rates in Latin America, and the UK Foreign Office specifically cautions about walking in cities such as Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula and about certain mainland road routes. Roatan is a Bay Island roughly 40 miles offshore with a tourism-driven economy, and the guidance for the Bay Islands is ordinary petty-theft prevention: don’t leave valuables on the beach, use ATMs your hotel recommends, avoid unlit roads after dark, use reputable transport. At Turquoise Bay you’re behind a gate on a 30-acre private property with an included shuttle, which removes most of the exposure. Check your own government’s current advisory before you travel; these change.

Do I need to dive to enjoy Turquoise Bay?

Mostly, yes. Non-divers get a quiet beach, a good pool, free kayaks and paddleboards, mangrove tours, horseback riding and botanical tours — a real week. But the price, location and daily rhythm are built around the boat schedule, and if you’re not on the boat you’ll spend a lot of the day waiting for people who are. Snorkelers who ride the dive boats do fine; pure sun-and-shopping travelers should be on West Bay.

How far is the resort from the airport and from West Bay?

Roughly 30 minutes’ drive from Roatán International Airport (RTB), and about 20 minutes from French Harbour. The airport shuttle is included in the package, which is genuinely unusual on Roatan. West Bay and West End are on the opposite end of the island — budget the better part of an hour each way, plus taxi fare, if you want a night out there. Most guests do it once, if at all.

Are the rooms accessible? I have knee problems.

Flag this at booking and get confirmation in writing. The property is spread across a 30-acre hillside and a substantial share of the rooms — the Hillside category in particular — involve stairs and slopes. Guests with mobility limitations repeatedly note this. Lower-lying Ocean View rooms are the ones to request. The resort is small enough that reservations can genuinely accommodate you if you ask early.

Final Verdict: 8.3 out of 10

Turquoise Bay does one thing, does it well, and prices it honestly. For a diver, a week here at roughly $149 per person per night — three boat dives a day on reef nobody else is working, all meals, all local drinks, airport transfers, kayaks and mangrove tours — is the best-value all-inclusive proposition on Roatan and one of the better ones in the Caribbean. The 26-room scale means the service is personal in a way large resorts can’t replicate, and the guest reviews reflect that: staff quality is the single most-praised element year after year.

The score isn’t higher because the constraints are real. One restaurant for a week is a limitation, not a quirk. “Unlimited national liquors” is not a premium open bar. The hillside rooms have stairs. And the property is simple — clean, well-maintained, functional, not remotely luxurious.

Book it if you dive or are seriously committed to snorkeling, you value quiet reef over a busy beach town, and you’d rather spend money on tanks than on marble bathrooms. Skip it if you need dining variety, premium spirits, a kids’ club, step-free access, or the ability to walk to a bar. For the right traveler this is a 9; for the wrong one it’s a 6. Averaged honestly: 8.3 out of 10.