As part of the media team covering the Tourism Promotions Board Philippines’ (TPB) Community-Based Tourism (CBT) Workshop program, I often find myself in the enviable position of exploring the nearby attractions of the chosen communities. While I am given the luxury of seeing landscapes and cultures with fresh eyes, those behind the #CBT initiative do the painstaking work that makes these visits possible.

Organized by the Tourism Promotions Board of the Philippines, the workshop focused on destination resiliency, signaling renewed support for sustainable tourism in one of the country’s most secluded islands. Let’s get one thing straight: Batanes isn’t your average beach-and-bar-hopping Philippine getaway. It’s remote, like seriously remote.

Located far in the Philippine Sea, over 160 kilometers north of Luzon, it’s a destination that shrugs off convenience. Ships don’t carry passengers, only cargo. Flights are few, and when the weather decides to be unpredictable, which happens often, cancellations are a given.

Unbeknownst to many, the Tourism Promotions Board of the Philippines (TPB), the marketing arm of the Department of Tourism (DOT), has been conducting marketing enhancement workshops with community-based tourism (CBT) stakeholders from several communities nationwide.

If the walls of the gleaming convention halls at the Fili Hotel at NUSTAR Cebu could talk, they would recount the incredible metrics that provide a vivid picture of the phenomenal success of the Philippine Travel Exchange (PHITEX 2023) this year. The event drew 164 Filipino vendors and eighty-eight international buyers, generating 296,000,000 Philippine pesos in negotiated business-to-business transactions alongside widespread praise for the archipelago's diverse travel destinations.