Atauro Dive Resort
Save
Share
Atauro Street, Atauro East Timor
FindHotel
Agoda.com
Payments made by partners impact the order of prices displayed. Room types may vary.
Prices are provided by our partners for one room, with variable occupancy rules as provided by the property, and reflect total costs of the stay, including all taxes and fees known to our partners. Please see our partners for more details.
Full view
View all photos (121)121
Pool & Beach (38)
Dining (13)
About
#2 of 3 in Atauro
Location
Cleanliness
Service
Value
Atauro's first Dive Resort, our fully equipped dive centre offers daily trips to the numerous dive spots around the island. Whales and doplhins can be seen in October/November every year. Our cabins are right at the beach aswell as the restaurant where you can enjoy our delicious food, cold drinks and our home made ice cream. No eftpos/card payments available, USD CASH only accepted. Mastercards are no longer accepted anywhere in Timor Leste.
Read more
Property amenities
Free parking
Wifi
Free breakfast
Beach
Bicycle rental
Books, DVDs, music for children
Children Activities (Kid / Family Friendly)
Baggage storage
Street parking
Paid internet
Restaurant
Breakfast available
Special diet menus
Wine / champagne
Diving
Hiking
Snorkelling
Fishing
Board games / puzzles
Mosquito net
Outdoor furniture
Shared bathroom
Sun terrace
Laundry service
Show more
Room features
Safe
Seating area
Bottled water
Wake-up service / alarm clock
Room types
Non-smoking rooms
Good to know
Languages Spoken
English, German, Portuguese
Location
Full view
Contact
Atauro Street, Atauro East Timor
Getting there
Rental CarsSee all Atauro car hire
75Reviews0Q+A6Room tips
Reviews
Traveller rating
- 64
- 8
- 1
- 0
- 2
Time of year
Traveller type
Language
Selected filters
- Filter
- English
Sort by:
Most Recent
Amazing dive resort, dive location, local staff and diving instructors Marty, Beat and Desi. Rooms were ok wooden villas were great, accom accross the road was baking hot and horrible. Toilets are eco toilets but they smell really bad. Food was top shelf made by the local staff who really add value. Amazing home made ice cream. Vege options were great too but often no variety in meals... Volker the owner however, is a real dirty piece of work. This resort offers discounts for multiple dives however, the owner will often back track on his word. He will lie, cheat and not keep his word any chance he can if it means he saves one dollar... I do not recommend this dive resort for the reason that the owner just wants to take advantage. My suggestion is to stay at another resort on the island an be treated with respect. Its worth the extra few dollars it costs.…
Read more
Date of stay: November 2019Trip type: Travelled
1 Helpful vote
Helpful
Response from vollie, Manager at Atauro Dive Resort
Responded 14 Mar 2020
Hi Charlie, Thanks for your feedback and its good to know we have an amazing place and amazing staff! First and foremost our prices and all the discounts we offer are written clearly in guest information leaflets placed in all the guest rooms and on the emails we send to our guests. And for anyone to decide to go diving with us, it is obvious that they agreed with the price. It is such a shame for you to write things about the owner which are not true just because you want to massage your ego . The owner just wanted you to pay your bill and not causing a scene at the resort. If you wanted a discount you would have asked before you did any dives, not when it is time to make the payment. I am sure previous reviews we have had from other guests will speak for themselves. Thanks, Saffy
Read more
+1
We intended to stay for just two nights at Atauro Dive Resort and ended up staying for a whole week. This place is perfect. The bungalows are beautiful, the beds are comfy, the food is delicious, the staff is very kind and always available and the whole place is perfectly clean and well taken care of. We contacted the owner Volker and Safi in advance and they were very kind and responsive. Oh and the diving is sublime. We went on several dives with Marti and Bailey and had a blast. Such nice, professional and fun guys. We can’t recommend this place enough and would come back in a heartbeat.
Read more
Date of stay: February 2020Trip type: Travelled
Helpful
Response from Volker Katzung, Owner at Atauro Dive Resort
Responded 10 July 2020
Thank you very much for your nice review. We are happy that you enjoyed your stay and hope to see you again. Regards Volker
Read more
My partner and I had a wonderful experience getting our PADI open water cards at Atauro Dive Resort. We travelled there in January during the middle of the wet season, but there was no rain falling on Atauro despite it bucketing down in Dili through the week. The resort is serene and minimal. Generous bungalows are open to the air with basic shower facilities. Healthy, sustaining and reasonably priced meals are provided on site three times a day. The beach is fifty metres away. Hammocks stretch between the trees in a few places. The dive equipment available is practical and carefully maintained. Our instructors Marti and Bailey were both excellent communicators, lovers of the ocean, and great company in the evening. Out in the ocean nearby you can dive in a few different places, to most of which you're delivered by boat. You can readily find yourself at fifteen metres deep on a coral wall teeming with life, with another fifty metres of reef below you. The diversity of crustaceans, turtles, reef fish, nudibranches and sea snakes is pretty amazing. We dived two or three times a day during our stay, once in the morning, once after lunch and sometimes once later in the afternoon or evening. I'd highly recommend this experience to any new diver.…
Read more
Date of stay: January 2020
Value
Cleanliness
Service
Helpful
Response from Volker Katzung, Owner at Atauro Dive Resort
Responded 10 July 2020
Thank you very much for your nice review. We are happy that you enjoyed your stay with us and hope to see you again. Regards Volker
Read more
Marti and the team are hands down the best crew to dive with on Ataúro. We did a few dives with them. They have a great boat and good gear. They know their stuff and showed us some awesome spots in one of the worlds most beautiful places. 5 stars!!
Read more
Date of stay: January 2020Trip type: Travelled
Helpful
Response from Volker K, Owner at Atauro Dive Resort
Responded 16 Feb 2020
Thank you very much for your nice review. We are glad that you enjoyed your stay and hope to see you again. Regards Volker
Read more
HungoverTT wrote a review Nov 2019
Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam853 contributions89 helpful votes
+1
Its well built and eco friendly dive resort. You can see the owner Volker and the staff members looks after the place. It has a compost toilets, communal shower, and communal dining area. The beach is full of dead seaweed though. The dive is just at its doorstep which makes this island so amazing. Love it
Read more
Date of stay: November 2019Trip type: Travelled
3 Helpful votes
Helpful
Response from vollie, Owner at Atauro Dive Resort
Responded 3 Nov 2019
Dear HunoverTT, Thank you very much for your nice review. We are glad that you liked your stay and hope to see you again. Regards Volker
Read more
We had arranged to stay with Atauro Dive Resort months in advance (Feb 2019), and we were really looking forward to staying and diving with them. We went there in early October 2019. We knew it would take four days to get there, and we were okay with that because we thought it would be worth it. It wasn't. Here's why: We didn't like the accommodations. We don’t know why, but the bungalow we got wasn’t the bungalow we expected. There are only two superior bungalows, and one is very obviously better than the other, location-wise. That’s why we book ten months in advance! It’s not as close to the ocean as we wanted/expected, and way too close to the communal composting toilets. It’s weird and off-putting. The interior of the bungalow is fine, BTW, and Caleb’s great cooking and willingness to accommodate vegetarians is really nice-genuinely sorry we missed out on more of that! Next: we went snorkeling in the house reef right in front of the property. We were out for quite a while, and the first thing we said to each other was, "Lots of nice corals, not so many fish." It would later be explained to us like this: "There are 10,000 people living on Atauro, and they all fish every day." These waters are overfished. It’s not the resort’s fault, but it’s a problem that we didn’t want to make our holiday problem. Let's be clear: we are talking pelagics AND reef fish. We did not expect pelagics; we did expect reef fish, and they are not there in numbers you would expect. It is true that Atauro has nice wall dives and beautiful corals, but there is no getting around the low fish populations. Finally: We did not think that the dive experience we wanted was going to be available there, because of the above, plus we felt that what we were being offered on our very first dive was not what we had agreed upon, also weeks if not months in advance. I've said it before and I will say it again: If you are not comfortable or happy with the dive shop you are with, cut your losses and move on. It almost certainly is not going to get better, and it's for sure not worth the expense, disappointment, or worse. So that's what we did. Within several hours of arrival, after four days of travel, we arranged to leave Atauro and dive from Dili, and we are INCREDIBLY happy we did that. It turned out to be one of the best weeks of diving and touring that we have ever had. I am deliberately not mentioning names and not getting into finger-pointing. We didn't like the place, so we left. We have moved on. In any case, people can argue the diving, but we felt that the shore diving off of Dili east coast was amongst the best we have ever seen, and most of the time we were the only ones at the sites. The best part of going to Atauro is whale and dolphin watching off the boat. Dili is also a really fun town, and we would never have known that if we hadn't left. So, leaving Atauro Dive Resort led to what would become the best trip we have ever had. Life is funny like that.…
Read more
Date of stay: October 2019
Rooms
Location
Service
2 Helpful votes
Helpful
Response from vollie, Owner at Atauro Dive Resort
Responded 3 Nov 2019
Dear Honu-rangi, Thank you very much for your review. We are very sorry, that you didn't like it, but we don't really understand your complains. The other deluxe bungalow is instead of 25 meter, 20 meters away from the beach - I don't think that is a big difference and both bungalows have the same distance to the communal toilets. The reason you couldn't stay in the other bungalow was that somebody booked it before you. Regarding the snorkeling I only can say: read all the other reviews about our place. You just snorkeled 30 meters away from the beach, if you would have gone a bit further out or even have joined one of boat trips, you would have seen one of the best coral reefs in the world and thousands of fishes. Actually right in front of our place, just 300 meter out, is the most bio-diverse reef in the world. Regarding your first dive: you booked a refresher dive with us - we had 2 other people that day, so we wanted to take you out together. The plan was to have 2 instructors and 2 divemasters to conduct the refresher, which would have been a ratio of 1:1 for each diver - I don't think that is a bad ratio. But anyway, as you refused because in your opinion the group was to big, you were offered a personal refresher for the next morning which you also refused. Finally after you told us, you would like to leave, our manager even helped you to organize your transport back and brought you the next morning personally to the boat she had organized for you. Also as you basically cancelled last minute - our cancellation policy states clearly that you have to pay the full amount for the days you booked. Again our manager was very accommodating and only kept the small deposit, we asked for confirming your booking. Regards Volker
Read more
All of the staff here are incredibly friendly and the food is very taisty/reasonably priced! The Dive Masters/Instructors are very knowledgeable and are always making trips to all of the dive sights around the island. We had a wonderful stay here and would recommend it to anyone coming to Atauro Island for diving or relaxing. If you are on the island during a Saturday, be sure to check out the market for some taisty seafood and fruit!
Read more
Date of stay: October 2019Trip type: Travelled
2 Helpful votes
Helpful
Response from vollie, Owner at Atauro Dive Resort
Responded 30 Oct 2019
Dear Tyler, Thank you very much for your nice review. We are glad that you enjoyed your stay here and hope to see you again. Regards Volker
Read more
I thoroughly enjoyed my stay at the Atauro Dive Resort. Everything was great, from the diving and accommodations to the food. Atauro Island is a fantastically beautiful location. The people are friendly and the geography is stunning. The resort's facilities are well planned and maintained. The diving was stellar and always conducted in a safe and professional manner by the staff. Upon my return home I was asked my opinion of Atauro by friends. My response to them all has consistently been- "You WILL regret it if you don't go there soon!"
Read more
Date of stay: July 2019
Value
Location
Service
Helpful
Response from vollie, Owner at Atauro Dive Resort
Responded 29 Oct 2019
Dear James, Thank you very much for your review. We are glad that you enjoyed everything and hope to see you again in the future. Regards Volker
Read more
A memorable week away, getting a little off grid and learning how to dive. Marty and sam were amazing hosts, and their patience with teaching us to dive (first timers) made this one incredible week exploring the world underwater. And the night sky, wow.
Read more
Date of stay: August 2019Trip type: Travelled
Helpful
Response from vollie, Manager at Atauro Dive Resort
Responded 12 Sept 2019
Hello Jarrod, Thank you for your lovely review. It was great having you here and being able to show you the beautiful world that lies below the surface. We hope you both come back soon, come back and do your dive course's! Kind Regards, Sammy.
Read more
We just spent a beautiful week on this stunning island. I travelled with my 4yr old son for a week of superb diving and relaxation. Yes I know - 4yr old and relaxation are rarely used in the same sentence however, Atauro Dive Resort and their friendly, professional staff made sure our stay was just that. Sammy and Marti are some of the best instructors I've come across both with there knowledge of the area and their commitment to ensure a safe diving experience. The accommodation was clean and comfy and very generous portions of food. Overall it was fantastic - so much so we are going back for Christmas for two weeks :)
Read more
Date of stay: July 2019Trip type: Travelled
Value
Cleanliness
Service
Helpful
Response from vollie, Manager at Atauro Dive Resort
Responded 12 Sept 2019
Hello Jo, Thank you so much for this lovely review. We will see yourself and your gorgeous children when you return in December! Kind Regards, Sammy.
Read more
PRICE RANGE
USD 40 - USD 40 (Based on Average Rates for a Standard Room)
LOCATION
East TimorDili DistrictAtauro
NUMBER OF ROOMS
5
Is This Your Tripadvisor Listing?
Own or manage this property? Claim your listing for free to respond to reviews, update your profile and much more.
Claim Your Listing Frequently Asked Questions about Atauro Dive Resort
Which popular attractions are close to Atauro Dive Resort?
Nearby attractions include Empreza Di'ak (1.4 km).
What are some of the property amenities at Atauro Dive Resort?
Some of the more popular amenities offered include free breakfast, an on-site restaurant, and free parking.
What food & drink options are available at Atauro Dive Resort?
Guests can enjoy free breakfast and an on-site restaurant during their stay.
Is parking available at Atauro Dive Resort?
Yes, free parking and street parking are available to guests.
Which languages are spoken by the staff at Atauro Dive Resort?
The staff speaks multiple languages, including English, German, and Portuguese.