Tourism Reimagined: Not Just an Industry, But a Communication System
Last week, I had the opportunity to address a group of third-year communication students enrolled in the Social Change course at the University of the Philippines Cebu. The lecture centered on my advocacy for sustainable tourism, titled "Tourism, Voice and Social Change." I began with a provocative statement that often unsettles audiences who typically associate tourism with leisure, exotic destinations, and temporary escape: tourism is not merely an industry. It functions as a complex communication system.
The Narrative Power of Tourism
Tourism communicates powerful stories about identity, belonging, and cultural value. It determines whose culture is deemed important and defines the purpose of a place. This system inherently assigns value, amplifying specific voices while systematically muting others. Like all forms of communication, tourism is never neutral. Whether by design or by default, it operates as a medium that communicates and reinforces existing power structures.
Many conventional tourism narratives unfortunately reduce vibrant communities into mere products for consumption. Culture is transformed into a performance for visitors, risks are overlooked, and labor—particularly the labor of women—is rendered invisible. From a communication perspective, this is precisely how power perpetuates itself: not through overt force, but through the subtle process of normalization. Inequality becomes routine, and silence becomes an ordinary, accepted part of the landscape.
Women, Voice, and Visibility: The Unseen Backbone
One particular slide from that lecture, titled "Women, Voice and Visibility," resonated deeply with the students long after our discussion concluded. This resonance may be due to the approaching International Women's Month, or perhaps because the reality it depicted is all too familiar. In countless communities across the Philippines and beyond, women form the indispensable backbone of tourism and broader livelihood systems. Yet, they are conspicuously absent as decision-makers, narrators, or leaders in the official stories told about these industries.
Women are the ones who cook the food served to tourists, weave the textiles showcased as cultural heritage, farm the land, clean accommodations, host guests, manage households, and provide care. Simultaneously, they absorb the disproportionate shocks of climate change, natural disasters, and economic instability. Despite this foundational role, their contributions are frequently unnamed in glossy brochures, relegated to footnotes in reports, or merely factored into abstract economic metrics like gross domestic product.
When Communication Fails to Name Work
When communication systems fail to properly name and acknowledge work, they inherently devalue it. This devaluation directly leads to exclusion from positions of power and influence. This is not simply an economic oversight; it is fundamentally a crisis of visibility. The failure to see and name women's labor perpetuates a cycle where their agency remains unrecognized and their potential for leadership is stifled.
A Case Study in Empowerment: The Women Abaca Farmers of Polillo Island
During the lecture, I shared the inspiring case of women abaca farmers on Polillo Island. For decades, these women were quiet, essential workers within their local economy. A significant shift occurred not because their inherent capacity changed, but because the narrative surrounding them began to change. When these women started participating beyond mere attendance—when they began leading discussions, negotiating community priorities, and speaking in their own authentic words—the entire system began to shift. Their newfound voice translated directly into tangible agency, and their increased visibility translated into real influence.
Procedural vs. Substantive Empowerment
This distinction is critical. Procedural empowerment—being present, complying with existing structures, and being counted—is not the same as substantive empowerment. Substantive empowerment occurs when women actively shape outcomes, innovate solutions, and influence the decisions that affect their lives and communities. True communication for social change demands a commitment to this deeper, substantive form of empowerment.
The Challenge of Sustainable and Just Tourism
Any tourism model that claims sustainability while excluding the voices and contributions of women is neither truly sustainable nor just. As I emphasized to the students, advocacy is not merely about raising awareness. At its core, it is about deliberately shifting power relations. It requires asking uncomfortable, necessary questions: Who gets to speak in this system? Whose knowledge is considered legitimate and valuable? Whose future is actually being protected and prioritized?
We must also be critically wary of what some term "resilience porn"—stories that romanticize women's endurance and strength while completely ignoring the unjust systems that make such extreme endurance necessary in the first place. Celebrating women's resilience without simultaneously challenging the structural exclusion that demands it only serves to transfer responsibility from institutions and systems onto the shoulders of individuals.
A Call for International Women's Month and Beyond
As International Women's Month approaches, the challenge before us is clear and urgent. We must move beyond simply telling stories about women. We must actively create and defend spaces where women can tell their own stories, on their own terms, in their own voices, and with the assurance that their words will have real, consequential impact.
I concluded the lecture with a line that deserves to be echoed far beyond the classroom walls: genuine social change begins when communication stops speaking for people and starts the transformative work of speaking with them.
Making women visible in tourism and in society is not an act of charity. It is a fundamental act of justice. And in tourism, as in all facets of our collective life, justice begins with a simple, profound question: who finally gets to speak, and who is finally heard?
