How community-based tourism can protect off-the-grid Itbayat

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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.

But that’s all part of the province’s added attraction among countless other reasons to come. For those who make it, Batanes offers something rare: a place that still feels untouched.

Most travelers, however, stick to the main island of Batan, home to Basco, the provincial capital, and its main airport. Some hop over to Sabtang for its time-capsule old stone houses and cinematic coastlines.

Then there’s Itbayat, the third and most far-flung of the province’s inhabited islands.

Itbayat marks the end of Batanes’ paved roads. Often skipped, forgotten, or simply left off most visitors’ itineraries, it might just be the most intriguing destination of all.

Boats and planes

When it comes to tourism, Batanes remains one of the Philippines’ least-visited provinces. In 2024, just over 13,000 travelers arrived or an average of 35 per day.

Only about 10% of them ventured farther to Itbayat, the country’s northernmost inhabited island. Beyond it lie the uninhabited islets: Siayan, Mavulis, and Y’ami.

Getting to Itbayat is part of the adventure: a three-hour boat ride across choppy seas or a seven-minute flight from Basco aboard a six-seater plane, costing around P3,000.

Perhaps because of the nausea-inducing boat trip or the small-plane ride that appears scary to many, most tourists skip it, making Itbayat feel like the Philippines’ best-kept secret.

Spanish colonial influence reached Itbayat with the founding of a canonical mission in 1855. Under American rule, Itbayat became a municipal district in 1909 and was declared a full municipality by 1935.

But like the rest of Batanes, Itbayat sits in a zone of frequent natural threats. Typhoons and earthquakes are common. A magnitude 6.0 quake in 2019 severely damaged many of its traditional stone houses and the historic Santa Maria de Mayan Church — a stark reminder of the island’s vulnerability and unshaken resilience.

Geographically isolated

With resilience now embedded in daily life in Batanes and its exceptional landscapes drawing growing interest from travelers, it has become essential for government agencies to prioritize the province in development plans.

The focus: strengthening defenses against recurring natural disasters while integrating climate-resilient practices into its tourism strategy.

For the first time since the pandemic, a national government agency brought a capacity-building program to the island of Itbayat. The Tourism Promotions Board (TPB) of the Philippines, the marketing arm of the Department of Tourism (DOT), led a two-day workshop aimed at empowering communities through community-based tourism.

“This initiative reflects our commitment to inclusive, community-led tourism — especially in geographically isolated areas,” said TPB chief operating officer Marga Nograles, calling the event a key step toward empowering one of the country’s most remote communities.

Alberto Gadia, TPB’s domestic tourism marketing specialist, also noted that the team wants to “learn from the local stakeholders” as well.

Participants included staff from the Itbayat Tourism Office, emergency responders, municipal employees, local tour operators, homestay owners, and DOT-accredited guides from across Batanes.

“It’s high time Philippine destinations viewed tourism through the lens of resilience,” said workshop speaker Boboi Costas, founder of Grassroots Travel Consulting and former Cebu Provincial Tourism officer. “We often talk about sustainability, but we overlook that true sustainability can’t exist without resilience.”

Also joining were Louie and Chen Mencias, a husband-and-wife team and longtime advocates of sustainable and community-based tourism. Both have written widely used training modules that help empower local communities across the country.

Postcard-like

As the workshop continued, our group — composed of travel writers and content creators invited by the Tourism Promotions Board — set out to explore the island of Itbayat.

Over three days, we traveled across a landscape of jagged limestone peaks and sweeping grassy hills. The terrain echoed the shape of the waves of the Philippine Sea, the same waters we had just crossed aboard a faluwa, a traditional open-deck boat built without outriggers.

Designed with a deep hull and long mast, it’s made for navigating the powerful swells that roll between the islands of Batanes.

On our second day, we woke early for a morning hike to one of the island’s most spectacular spots: Rapang Cliff. The trail to Rapang’s most “Instagrammable” viewpoint, as Gen Z travelers might call it, is a relaxed five-kilometer loop, with some scrambles over sharp rock formations.

Along the way, scenic stops abound, but the payoff comes upon reaching the hand-painted Rapang Cliff sign. From there, a fortress-like landscape unfolds massive table-top ridges stretch toward the sea, evoking images of “The Wall” from Game of Thrones.

Beyond them, the hills spill into the Philippine Sea, which gleams under the sun with its azure waters and foamy white swells — the same waves that had stirred our faluwa just a day earlier. Rapang Cliff may be the showstopper, but Itbayat still has more stories to tell.

My personal favorite was Torongan Cliff and its ancient burial mounds, not only for the view, but for what it reveals about Philippine prehistory.

Near Torongan Cave, believed to be one of the country’s earliest human settlements, lies the Axurud, a spherical stone tomb believed to be the resting place of an entire Austronesian family who lived on the island between 2,000 and 4,000 years ago.

Shaped like a boat and pointing toward the ocean, the tomb reflects an Austronesian belief that in death, the spirit returns to the sea, completing a journey back to its origin.

Archaeologists trace them to a seaborne migration from Formosa (modern-day Taiwan) around 4,000 B.C., as part of the larger Austronesian expansion across the Pacific.

This findings also backs the evident influence of the Austronesians in our country through language roots, cultural traditions, and even physical characteristics observed among various ethnolinguistic groups..

It also raises fascinating questions: Who arrived first? The Negritos, believed to have crossed a land bridge from Borneo? Or the Austronesians, whose presence is more thoroughly backed by archaeological evidence? The answer remains keenly discussed.

The rest of our exploration took us to other natural wonders. Among them, at Mauyen Cliff, we stood on a hair-raising high cliff with uninterrupted views of the sea.

At Chinapoliran Port, once the island’s main docking site for faluwa boats, we were told of its past as one of the most dangerous ports in the country, constantly exposed to the sea’s fury.

From there, we continued inland to Cavaywan Lake. While its surface was still and unassuming, it was the soil, an intense, reddish clay, that caught my attention.

According to our local guide, the soil’s color may be attributed to high concentrations of iron and protein, giving the lake a distinctly raw, elemental character.

Strategy, art in tourism

By all means, Itbayat remains a secret to most: one of the Philippines’ oldest settlements and yet, in terms of tourism, still an infant.

Despite its history dating back to the arrival of the Austronesians, the island has long remained isolated, both geographically and developmentally. That remoteness has protected its natural and cultural integrity, but it has also kept Itbayat off the tourist radar, far behind the glossy promotion of more accessible provinces.

Recognizing both the opportunity and the risk that comes with increased attention, the Tourism Promotions Board of the Philippines is proceeding with caution.

Rather than replicate the high-volume, high-impact tourism models seen elsewhere, the agency is turning to its playbook of community-driven tourism; a slower, more intentional approach rooted in community involvement and culture preservation.

“Itbayat is not simply another destination,” said Nograles. “We see it as an invitation — an encounter with one of the Philippines’ most authentic and untouched frontiers.”

That sentiment served as the spirit of the two-day tourism and marketing workshop aimed not at enticing investors or developers, but with entrusting the local community itself.

The goal: to cultivate a kind of guardianship among Itbayat’s residents, ensuring that any future growth in tourism aligns with their values and vision.

“This is the spirit we hope to nurture — empowering the people of Itbayat to take pride in their land, to protect its integrity, and to become active participants in shaping its future,” Nograles said. “Our emphasis on low-impact, leave-no-trace travel isn’t just a tourism policy — it’s a promise to future generations.”

What emerges from Itbayat is not just a story of a place on the cusp of change, but a test case for whether tourism in the Philippines can evolve to a more ethical, less commercialized, and faithful to the place.

For now, Itbayat Island and the rest of Batanes remains everything travelers dream of: pristine and unspoiled. Whether we’re past, present, returning or future visitors, it’s on us to help keep it that way. – Rappler.com

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