Over the weekend, I made a three-day visit to Puerto Princesa City—my very first to the island of Palawan. Having traveled to some of our most prized tourism sites, I must say I came away from Puerto very impressed and also very thoughtful.

No, I did not find there the hordes of tourists I found when I visited Boracay a few months ago. I did not see the hustle and bustle of Mactan and Cebu City with their stately hotels, resorts and shopping centers. Nor did I find the colonial look of Subic and Olongapo—one part reservation, the other a crowded city.

Puerto Princesa is something else. It calls and prides itself as the “Ecotourism Capital of the Philippines.” More recently, it’s spoken of itself as the “City in the Forest.”

Either way, it means what it says, or its mayor, Edward Hagedorn, and his constituency of 161,000, do. No place in our country takes greater pride in its natural heritage or is more obsessed in keeping it. With already 60 percent of forest cover, they have planted an additional 2 million trees since 1992.

The original settlement with its beautiful port and bay was named after Princess Eulalia of Spain, born in 1864 to Queen Isabel II and her consort, Dr. Francisco de Asis. When the princess suffered an untimely death, the queen changed the town’s name to Puerto de la Princesa, Port of the Princess. Eventually, the name mutated to Puerto Princesa.

Puerto Princesa’s great asset today comes less from history and more from nature. Its magnificent bounty consists of forests, beaches and sea, spread over 253,982 hectares of land and thousands of kilometers of water on both the South China Sea and the Sulu Sea. The place has everything God and Nature could bestow. And it seems to be in no great hurry to exploit the limits of this treasury.

To visit Puerto is to be conscious of the contrast it provides to nearby Boracay, another great gift from heaven. With Boracay, after your great awe at the riches bestowed on the island—the magnificent beach of white sand stretching several kilometers—you soon sink into regret. You regret the obvious overdevelopment of the islands; the commercialism that has garish shops sitting by side by side with plushy establishments; the endless stream of people trying to ply a trade; and the appalling breakdown of services and the flooding of some streets whenever there is a heavy downpour.

You feel in Boracay that people here rushed too fast to make a buck, and that nobody was around to play referee. The result is a degree of ugliness shadowing the beauty of the beach.  And you can’t help worrying that sometime in the not-too-distant future, the entire dream of this island-paradise will be evaporate.

Going around Puerto Princesa and talking with Mayor Hagedorn, one senses that no such peril arising from success will happen there. You learn quickly that the city is developing at its own pace; because it does not feel engaged in any race with other tourist areas in the country or abroad. While the flights to the capital city are nearly always full, there are only five flights daily from Manila, and two from Cebu.

The mayor says they have shied away from promoting tourism in Puerto because, at this point, they already have all the tourists and travelers they can handle. With just under a thousand hotel rooms, they can only take on the smaller conventions and seminars. They have had to turn down this year many applications for big international and national conferences.

Why didn’t they rush to fill in the anticipated demand that came with the easing of the Asian crisis? Because Puerto was more concerned with first conserving and enhancing its natural environment than chasing after the tourist dollar. It’s taken Mayor Hagedorn a while to turn several thousands of kaingero into protectors of the forest reserves and tillers of the soil, but that part of the job is just about done now. They have Bantay-Gubat and Bantay-Dagat programs that are ever alert to threats to the environment. Another program has been the building of the first sanitary landfill in the country, on which the city has invested a lot of money. The mayor says they built it not because the city is already reeking with garbage, but in anticipation of the time when growth will demand it. In short, he is preparing the city for the future. For years now, Puerto has been winning just about every clean-and-green award up for grabs. It will win many, many more at the rate they’re going.

Now, they’re turning their attention on building vital infrastructure, like roads and highways and a modern airport. Puerto recently got approval for a P1.2-billion budget for the modernization and expansion of its airport. The city is also modernizing various roads and highways leading to many of its priceless tourism assets, including Sabang Beach and the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park. And several hotels are going up, which should add within a couple of years over 1,000 rooms to the city’s carrying capacity.

Overall, Mayor Hagedorn’s sights are fixed on 2010 as the coming-out party for Puerto Princesa, when it can fully open its doors to the world. He says that by then, they will have the airport, the rooms, the highways, the other infrastructure and the other facilities for sustainable tourism development. By then, tourism can flourish side by side with Puerto’s ecological legacy, not at its expense.

It is an approach that has lately found many adherents in countries long engaged in tourism. In a report last week, The Economist noted: “With tourism, it is not so clear that rapid development really is in the locals’ economic interest. If their government trashes their natural habitat, it is like an investment manager who pays you big dividends out of your capital. The money is good for a while, but you lose in the long term.”

Mayor Hagedorn keeps his eyes focused on the capital, rather than on the immediate dividends. When he first came to office in 1992 as the first immigrant to be elected mayor of Puerto, he pledged to his constituents that he would do all to preserve all the bounty that God had given his adopted city. He confessed that his family was among the migrants who came in the 1950s to exploit Palawan’s riches. Now, he is paying back and conserving the riches.

The vision is encouraging to note at this time, when many say tourism is about to explode in the developing world. And growth will be fastest in the Asia-Pacific region.

One of our best bets for this tourism boom is Puerto Princesa. The city will be competitive with the best in the region, because it has prepared itself well. The people are up to the challenge. They have a leader who knows what it’s all about. They are ready for takeoff.

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The Way Forward: The lesson of Puerto Princesa

Over the weekend, I made a three-day visit to Puerto Princesa City—my very first to the island of Palawan. Having traveled to some of our most prized tourism sites, I must say I came away from Puerto very impressed and also very thoughtful.

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While the headlines, for the past 10 days, continued to center on the searing “power” controversy that is the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), much of Pangasinan is still without electricity, and residents in that rice-producing province  continue to grapple with the effects of Typhoon Cosme, such as rain-drenched—and possibly spoiled—rice. And the unkindest cut of all: the seeming lack of government presence.