Data is catching up to the trend. A 2024 Department of Tourism survey found that 62 percent of domestic travelers now seek community-based experiences—homestays, artisanal workshops, mangrove planting—over cookie-cutter tours. Locally, municipalities such as Sara and Carles report a 25 percent jump in tourism microbusiness since launching “voluntour” weekends. Guests tidy beaches by day, then gather for home-cooked batchoy, sinugba, and sinigang with barangay leaders at dusk.
Technology is amplifying the region’s natural and cultural wealth—dolphin-spotting in Culasi, heritage Jaro in Iloilo City, the terraced fields of Janiuay—through mobile platforms that track real-time impact. Travelers scan QR codes to see how their lodging fees fund oyster repopulation in Carles or solar-lamp distributions to mountain sitios, earning digital badges and discounts on future farm stays.
Purpose tourism is not charity; it is smart economics. Lopez points out that when tour groups paid fisherfolk to restore seagrass beds—a critical nursery for fish—local catch volumes rose by 18 percent the next season. “That is sustainable income,” he notes, “not a one-time cash handout.” At this week’s Expo, partnerships on display include hotel groups buying surplus heirloom rice from cooperatives, dive operators funding coral nurseries, and universities digitizing ancestral chants alongside folklore tours.
For the traveler, this model offers a deeper reward: the chance to become co-authors in a place’s ongoing story. A retired teacher from Iloilo City told me she snorkeled in Estancia to plant her first coral fragment—after decades of “armchair tourism.” For her, that hands-on role transformed a vacation into a vocation, reframing leisure as legacy.
When the Expo closes on June 8, Iloilo City will walk away with more than flyers and discount coupons. It will have charted new pathways through thriving mangroves, revived crafts, and strengthened co-ops. The next challenge is to scale these pilots across the country’s tourism islands, so purpose tourism becomes the rule rather than the exception. As Lopez urged, “Let us leave each shore better than we found it—and let our footprints become seeds, not scars.”
Drawing from a guiding principle of my Ignatian heritage—seeking the greater good in every journey—the VisMin Expo reminds us that our next trip need not only take us to new places. It can take us deeper into community, conscious of impact and rich in purpose. That may be the best travel deal of all.
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Doc H fondly describes himself as a lifelong learner who, like many others, dreams of a more life-giving and purpose-driven world built on justice, reflection, and joy. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he serves.
