RENOWNED for its natural beauty and wealth of cultural heritage, Davao Region is also known for its agricultural abundance. Aside from durian, coconuts, and bananas, Davao is also home to premium cacao that is processed into world-class chocolates. And planted on its fertile highlands are coffee trees that yield the sought-after coffee beans.
Davao is now known as the top producer of cacao and coffee. The region accounts for 80% of the country’s total cacao production and through Republic Act 115471, Davao Region was given the title “Cacao Capital of the Philippines”, and Davao City as the country’s “Chocolate Capital”.
While the region is also among the country’s top coffee producers, many of the coffee farms are planted to arabica, robusta, and excelsa varieties. Coffee thrives in the foothills of Mt. Apo as the trees are best planted in volcanic soil.
Beyond agriculture, the Department of Tourism, along with tourism stakeholders, has begun tapping the tourism potentials of the various agricultural industries related to these two high-value crops. From plantations, farming communities, processing plants to shops and cafes.
One new tourism product is the coffee and cacao tours, an immersive and educational experience that presents a unique perspective to the cacao and coffee industries of the region.
“The tours are story-driven; there’s more to your cup of coffee, there’s more to your cup of chocolate drink. There’s a deeper story to those cups, so we want to share these stories through these tours,” says Department of Tourism-11 Regional Director Tanya Rabat Tan.
The tours, she says, are culturally grounded that highlights the region’s cultural identity.
The tourism official is hopeful and confident that many people would take interest in the tours.
For tour operator Jen Ramirez, the proprietor of Cybercrib tours, the reception to the cacao and coffee tours is “very, very good.”
“I have received so many inquiries about our tours,” says Ramirez.
She said the tours are filled up, but Ramirez says she can take in only 10 guests inside a van to make it a comfortable experience. The most number of people she can take in a tour is three vans.
Ramirez says the tours have become an advocacy not just for her but to the people who collaborated in the activity, like the indigenous peoples, farming communities, businesses, tourism officials, and the tour guides.
Aside from giving jobs to tour guides, these tourism activities also provide additional livelihood to the farmers, especially during off-season.
“Yang coffee daw meron seasons, so some of them nawawala na ayaw na ng generation nila ituloy, mag-work na lang sa abroad,” Ramirez said.
(The coffee, they say, is seasonal. So some of them don’t want to plant anymore; the younger generation prefers to work abroad.)
In a Cybercribs coffee tour, tourists will visit a farm and meet the farmers who won awards for their beans and these champion farmers will explain the planting and growing of their coffee.
Afterwards, they will visit Coffee for Peace, where CEO and coffee grower Jojie Pantoja will share the art of coffee processing.
For Floreces Logronio Tadla, owner of Ces Travel and Tours, the tour experience is like a bridge that connects farmers and guests.
“The overall concept of our coffee and cacao tours is to provide an immersive, educational, and community-based experience,” Tadla says.
Their coffee and cacao tours are themed “Seed to Sip” and “Beyond the Cup”, which presents every step of the process from planting, harvesting, processing to tasting.
Tadla believes in the potential of these tours.
“In today’s travel landscape, mga tao naga-crave authentic, meaningful, and immersive experiences ba and ngano mangadto man ang turista sa laing lugar just to experience kanang ginatawag na local experience,” she said.
(People crave authentic, meaningful, and immersive experiences; and that is why tourists come to the place just to experience that ‘local experience.)
Tadla brands their tour packages as “purposeful trips” as many tourists nowadays want not just sightseeing but also would like to connect, to learn, and to contribute.
This new phase of sustainable, inclusive, and story-driven tourism was well acknowledged by President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. in his 2024 State of the Nation Address (Sona), one in which the country could position itself in that broad tourism market.
“Food culture, heritage and the arts, education, halal, and Islamic traditions, dive, cruise, farm and eco-tourism, even sports now have become potent subjects and products of a nation’s tourism,” the President said in his last year’s Sona.
And this experiential tourism is something that the region has lots and lots to offer. PIA DAVAO