JABONGA, AGUSAN DEL NORTE — Women running small businesses and community tourism groups in this lakeside municipality completed a two-day workshop on November 4–5, 2026, aimed at sharpening how they develop and sell tourism products. The session, held at the Jabonga Commercial Complex in Poblacion, was organized by the Department of Tourism Caraga through its Tourism Industry Skills Program, in partnership with the provincial tourism office and the municipal government. It brought together women-led micro, small, and medium enterprises with women members of community-based tourism organizations. The focus was practical: product enhancement, enterprise management, and retail innovation tailored to Jabonga's cultural and natural assets.
From Products to Experiences
The workshop drew on the Micro-Retail Tourism 2.0 framework, a DOT initiative developed with the Philippine Retailers Association to help small tourism-oriented businesses improve their offerings and marketing. For participants, that meant looking at their goods and services through a visitor's eyes: how a product is presented, how a story is told around it, and how the buying experience can be made more memorable. Jabonga's tourism identity rests on assets like the 1878 Our Lady of Assumption Parish and Museum, a heritage site that draws visitors interested in the town's Spanish-era history. The workshop encouraged participants to connect their enterprises to that identity rather than compete on price alone.
Why Women-Led Enterprises Matter Here
Women already anchor much of Jabonga's small-scale commerce, from food processing to handicrafts, and the workshop treated that role as a foundation to build on rather than a gap to fill. By strengthening business operations and product development at the enterprise level, the program aims to widen the share of tourism spending that stays within the community. The municipal government has framed the initiative as part of a broader push for inclusive tourism development, one that creates livelihood opportunities for residents who might otherwise be left out of the visitor economy. For a municipality where tourism is still an emerging sector, that groundwork matters more than headline arrivals.
