In many economies of the world, tourism is a key sector, with huge benefits and impacts to the economy and the society at large. It is a source of revenue, employment, social opportunities; means of protection and conservation of the environment, and a parameter for local economic development.
In the Philippines, its contributions to the country’s GDP and employment generation has remained resilient amidst the effects of the global economic and socio-economic difficulties. The country has continued to make gains in attracting more international arrivals and receipts, with about 10% of the total employment in the country generated by tourism. However, the concomitant vices of mass tourism the world over have generated heated debate about sustainability, and the sensitive attention has been directed towards ecotourism as the panacea to the environmental and ecological challenges associated with the controversial forms of tourism.
It is however not sacrosanct that the mere practice od ecotourism ensures its sustainability. It involves careful; and participatory planning within an overall community development strategy. Community based ecotourism organizations provide the opportunity for the community to have large control and ownership of tourism resources, albeit with nlimited capacity to effectively and sustainably manage these resources. It is against this background that this study was designed to investigate how the community-based ecotourism organizations in the Matnog Municipality can be strengthened, using the Juag Lagoon Fish Sanctuary as a case study.
Using primary and secondary data, collected from different sources and with different tools such as questionnaire survey, focus group discussion, key informant interviews, observation, free elicitation and the review and analyses of national and international literature on tourism, the study came to the following conclusions.