Local Community Collaboration and Sustainable Staycation Tourism: Case Studies from Cebu and Bohol, Philippines

Abstract

After the COVID-19 pandemic, developing countries such as the Philippines have sought to revive their weakened economies through tourism. As part of its revival plan, community-based tourism initiatives like “staycations” have been promoted to stimulate local economies and support post-pandemic recovery. However, limited research has examined whether such initiatives meaningfully engage local stakeholders or simply reinforce centralized, top-down governance, especially in a country where decentralization is met with a changing political climate. This study aims to elaborate on how staycation tourism, as a recovery strategy, uphold principles of participatory governance in the context of developing countries. Through reviewing and analyzing secondary data and the existing literature, the paper examines local staycation tourism in the Cebu and Bohol provinces of the Philippines, as informed by collaborative governance approaches, to analyze the institutional arrangements and the roles of local governments, tourism providers, and communities in implementing staycation initiatives as seen in programs such as the “Suroy-Suroy Sugbo” (Wander Around Cebu), the “Celebrate Cebu, Stay Cebu,” and Bohol’s designation as the country’s first UNESCO Global Geopark, which illustrate efforts to revitalize tourism through localized cultural and ecological experiences. While these initiatives promote domestic tourism, stemming from the collaboration between local and provincial authorities and local communities through the provision of skills training and funding, among others, there needs to be a clarification on the extent of how participatory these initiatives are. Ultimately, this paper suggests that to enable more sustainable and resilient tourism systems in both staycations and community-based tourism arrangements, governance processes must center community agency in planning and decision-making, while at the same time, nuancing collaborative frameworks through identifying and mapping power relations and its consequences in order to come up with a sustainable industry initially guised as a recovery safety net.