Revisiting Boracay Island, the Philippines: an integrated coastal zone management perspective

Abstract

Tourism is one of the important industries in the world. Tourism can bring positive and negative economic, socio-cultural and environmental consequences at the destination level. Small island tourism destinations are often more susceptible to these various insular impacts due to its geographical scale and environmental fragility. In some destinations, impacts associated with tourism development were able to control by formal plans. There has been a move from sector-specific planning for tourism into an Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) for island tourism. However, other researchers argued that planning is not an effective measure to control tourism development. Hence, this research examines the effectiveness of a formal plan and ICZM in guiding development in a small island coastal zone area that is experiencing high tourism demand. This research explores whether or not the Boracay Island Master Development Plan (BIMDP), the first formal master plan for Boracay Island in the Philippines, manifests the components of ICZM. The research also aimed to find out if BIMDP was able to control the developments in the Island. The research results revealed that BIMDP did not manifest the components of ICZM. It also suggested that formal plans were not fully able to control tourism development in Boracay. This research discussed the different factors influencing the implementation of BIMDP and the reasons why ICZM failed to guide the development in the Island.