SURE, travel around the world if you can, but try to get to know your own country first.

Interestingly, while a lot of the excitement that the Net has generated is due to its global reach, it is now being used as a powerful tool to encourage more Filipinos to travel within their own country. Local travel site Lakbay.Net at www.lakbay.net hopes to promote the concept of community-based tourism by creating greater awareness on the often-neglected resources that local communities can offer. Of course, this is part of the site's strategy of creating an e-commerce infrastructure for Philippine tourism, but Lakbay.Net claims that another goal is to give back to the community in the process.

"The Net is the best thing that has happened to community-based tourism," said Eddie Nuque, manager of Kalakbayan Travel Systems Inc., the company behind the Lakbay.Net site. "The Net offers inexpensive marketing access and connects the physical community to its virtual communities--meaning the people outside the physical community that are attracted to the destination."

While deluxe resorts and five-star hotels might hog the limelight, Nuque told the INQUIRER that the premise of community-based tourism is that each local community offers unique attractions, whether the people, heritage, special events or natural resources. Instead of the usual focus on getting more foreigners to visit our shores, community-based tourism aims to make more Filipinos discover and appreciate these relatively simple pleasures.

"To attract visitors, the community itself must have a strong sense of pride of place," Nuque said. "This strategy has enabled Lakbay.Net to build diverse and interesting content, where the choice of a featured destination is not premised on the availability of a five-star hotel or resort. In a sense, community-based tourism levels the playing field for both popular and emerging destinations."

One site feature intended to help strengthen this pride of place is Bahandi, Lakbay.Net's Philippine heritage site. Bahandi is a Visayan word meaning treasure or inheritance. In its archaic sense, the word also means bride price or dowry. This subsection is supposed to offer tours and maps of different heritage sites throughout the Philippines, but at present it just features the lakeshore towns of Laguna de Ba-e.

While ecotourism might just be a buzzword to some, Nuque said that the ultimate goal of local tourism should be sustainable development and empowerment of the local community. He noted that the main beneficiaries of tourist destinations should not be the tourists or the developers, but the members of the community.

For instance, he said that it does not make sense for a community to host a resort or other tourist attraction, if the employees would not come from the community itself.

"The Net really has the power to communicate responsible tourism, such that a tourist activity directly or indirectly supports the community's efforts toward sustainable development," Nuque said. "For example, while on the surface we look at river rafting or kayaking as simply fun activities, many environmentalists operating such programs are actually assisting the DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) in monitoring activities in the river to ensure that quarrying or other environmentally degrading activities are not being done. In this case, tourists who join such trips actually contribute to environmental protection."

In using technology as a tool to promote community-based tourism, Lakbay.Net has also tapped the power of mobile communications, offering both SMS- and Wireless Application Protocol-based services via Globe Telecom. Nuque also said that he was bullish over the e-commerce potential of local tourism, saying that a number of the site's visitors are already booking and paying for trips through the site.

"E-commerce is happening here already. It is very gratifying to see many commuters book a bus trip to Pangasinan or Baguio online and receive their seat assignment as soon as they get confirmation of their booking. Another example is a school in Tuguegarao that booked a trip to Corregidor for 30 students, arranging everything online," he said.