Rhodora Cillo still remembers the Port Barton of old.
“We got our fish right off the beach. We didn’t have to go out to sea,” she remembers. “Shrimp was ₱50 for a bucket full.”
At that time, Barton (as it is referred to by its short name), a quaint coastal village on the southern tip of San Vicente, Palawan, was a quiet place known only to the most adventurous travelers willing to endure at least four hours of navigating through torturous dirt roads.
Today, Cillo is treasurer of the Port Barton Multipurpose Cooperative, watching over a very different place. She also runs a family-owned accommodation and restaurant that caters to mostly foreign tourists.
The roads are paved, and travel to this cove is much easier. Tourists have started coming in droves. The place is almost like El Nido, Palawan’s biggest natural attraction, except that it is a bit less crowded. According to the municipal tourism office, Port Barton accounts for 80 percent of their tourist arrivals these days. It is an upward trajectory that began right after the pandemic. Business is booming.
Beneath a promising tourism outlook, Port Barton is confronting a situation that could destroy the inherent qualities it currently enjoys and that make it a popular alternative destination.
Tourism pressure
Moises David Cabungan, chair of the Port Barton Marine Park Council and a local environmentalist, acknowledged that there are problems on many fronts, including coral reef degradation due to weak regulation of tourist activities such as boat anchoring, and solid waste management.
“We have maybe two to three years to look like El Nido and the current problems they are facing now,” Cabungan said, referring to the water quality issues drawing bad raps against Palawan’s main tourist draw.
Cabungan, who has monitored Port Barton’s reefs for years, observes an annual coral loss rate of 2 to 3 percent due mainly to anchor damage.
It’s a slow hemorrhage that accelerates with each tourism season. Cabungan said that before the pandemic, more than 100 tourism boats operated in Port Barton’s waters. The numbers dropped during COVID, but they are now climbing again, currently at over 60 boats and rising steadily back toward triple digits. Each boat anchors multiple times daily, dragging heavy chains across coral heads that took decades to grow.
He said that Twin Reef, their signature dive site, has lost about half of its original coral cover. Divers who visited years ago return to find anchoring scars, broken formations, and patches of rubble where vibrant coral communities once thrived.
The transformation of Port Barton is happening at a breathtaking speed. Around 2018 and 2019, when word spread through travel blogs and Instagram feeds, Port Barton began to face its first carrying capacity challenge.
“Last year, we were turning down walk-in tourists and had to put up sleeping facilities on the islands because the village proper had run out of rooms,” Cillo said.
Arrival statistics
Tourist arrival records of San Vicente showed 80,000 arrivals in 2023, surging to 90,000 in 2024. Of that total, Port Barton boat operators served 63,000 tourists—fully 70% of the municipality’s tourism activity.
It’s a tenfold increase from pre-boom baseline levels, concentrated in a small bay area that was never designed to absorb such pressure. Peak season 2024 saw, for the first time, accommodations fully booked. The top establishments, the ones that invested early and built reputations, are currently booked through 2026.
“For the first time in 2024, we operated without needing owner subsidies,” Cillo said. And she is starting to get worried herself.
“What good is profitability if we destroy what makes this place special?”
Cabungan had tried to solve the problem by himself, funding his own effort to install mooring buoy systems. Shortly after, for reasons that remain unclear, someone removed the buoys. He said his own experience has discouraged other volunteer efforts.
“Who’s responsible — the municipality, TIEZA, the ecotax fund?” Cabungan asks. “While we argue about jurisdiction, the reef dies a little more each day.”
Water supply interruptions are now common in Barton, sometimes lasting full days. After rainfall, taps run brown with sediment. The distribution system, designed for a village of hundreds, cannot meet demand from resorts serving tens of thousands.
Establishments cope by maintaining storage tanks, rationing during dry spells, and warning guests about irregular service. It’s not the experience eco-tourists expect when booking accommodations months in advance.
Solid waste management is less than basic and is unideal for a quality attraction. Collection is irregular, with vehicles often breaking down. Schedules are not maintained, and garbage accumulates. With no proper disposal system, some resorts burn trash. Others dump in ravines. During storms, the accumulated waste washes down slopes and onto beaches.
“We’re serving 63,000 tourists annually without proper wastewater treatment,” acknowledged Ian Echanis, San Vicente’s Environmental Management Specialist. “Every establishment has septic systems, but there’s no centralized sewage treatment plant,” he said.
The municipality designated Port Barton as the priority recipient for sewage treatment plant investment, learning from El Nido’s aquifer contamination disaster. A site assessment has been done and some funding has been allocated, but actual construction has not commenced.
Tenurial instrument challenge
Most of Port Barton remains classified as timberland, and investors ideally have to secure a lease permit such as a FLAGT. The process is a lengthy and complex procedure through the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and only a few applicants have succeeded. Most establishments operate with minimal documentation — tax declarations and certifications of compliance rather than actual permits.
Easement violations
In Barton, many structures are built too close to the waterline and within the 25 meters that are supposed to be clear of any construction. The municipality takes a flexible approach instead of demolition, perhaps recognizing that strict enforcement would harm those dependent on tourism income.
But the tolerance perpetuates conditions that exacerbate overcrowding. Local owners lack capital for major expansion. The families who pioneered Port Barton tourism — the Bisagas, Ausans, Elsa’s family, El Bucero, and others—retain ownership of prime coastal properties, having resisted purchase offers from Chinese investors and major developers. But without access to development financing, they cannot build the additional capacity that could relieve pressure.
Barton looks like a perfect storm in the making. It is facing demand that exceeds supply, infrastructure that cannot expand, environmental pressure that intensifies, and no clear path forward.
What makes the situation particularly frustrating is that San Vicente has demonstrated capacity for sophisticated coastal planning. Long Beach, the municipality’s 14-kilometer showcase destination, has received comprehensive master planning through the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority. Detailed zoning, a 50-meter strict setback requirement, infrastructure coordination, and climate adaptation measures protect that area.
Port Barton, despite generating 80 percent of tourism receipts and accommodating 70 percent of visitors, received only conceptual planning. The disparity reflects developmental sequencing—Long Beach planning preceded development while Port Barton’s tourism boom preceded planning—but the outcome is a two-tier system where major future investments receive protection while existing small-scale operations struggle without regulatory clarity or infrastructure support.
“We have the technical capacity,” says Lucy Fadrilan, San Vicente’s Municipal Tourism Officer.
“The question is political will to prioritize Port Barton with the same rigor we applied to Long Beach. Right now, we’re working incrementally when the situation demands comprehensive intervention,” she said.
Cabungan has created the Luntian Wonders organization as an alternative governance structure, proposing solutions including a ₱60 million mangrove boardwalk and enterprise hub that would redirect tourism pressure while generating conservation funding. But such community initiatives cannot substitute for the comprehensive planning and infrastructure investment that only government can provide.
“We’re not asking for special treatment,” Cabungan said. “We’re asking for the same planning rigor that Long Beach received. Is that too much for the area generating 80 percent of tourism revenue?”
