Betting against paradise

Ten Catholic prelates across Western Visayas, Romblon, and Negros Occidental finally saw their joint manifesto published on November 7, pleading to keep casinos off Boracay.

They are nearly two months late to the funeral.

Up at Station 0 in Barangay Yapak, the six-story KABAN Hotel and Casino has been dealing cards since September 16 — a 2,000-square-meter Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) gaming floor tucked inside an 88-room property on a 23-hectare development by Golden TW Realty and Development Corp. We have fought this exact battle since 2003, when public outrage shelved a PAGCOR complex. We fought it again in 2021 when Rodrigo Duterte reversed his own gambling ban to scrape together pandemic cash. Now the slot machines are already humming.

What exhausts anyone who has covered this island for decades is the amnesia. In 2018, the state shut Boracay down for six brutal months, spending PHP 1.36 billion in direct rehabilitation funds, displacing 35,000 workers, and absorbing up to PHP 83.15 billion in economic losses to rescue a fragile ecosystem. Tricycle drivers, boatmen, and small carinderia owners bled so Boracay could be reborn as a sustainable sanctuary. When Manila later greenlit casinos anyway, the late Malay Municipal Councilor Nenette Aguirre Graf asked the only question that mattered: “Is this it, after sacrificing so much?”

Boracay never needed roulette wheels to pay its bills. Without a single casino, the island grossed PHP 60 billion (USD 1.2 billion) in 2019 tourism receipts. Even after pandemic shocks, Aklan led Western Visayas with PHP 42.929 billion in 2024 tourism receipts across 2,077,977 Boracay arrivals — 1.6 million of them domestic travelers and families — before climbing to 2,155,217 visitors in 2025.

Meanwhile, our neighbors are learning the lesson we refuse to see: civic groups in Phuket fiercely resisted casino legalization to protect their family-friendly beach appeal, and Thailand recently pivoted toward a USD 22.6 billion casino-free entertainment megaproject. Yet our tourism planners are trading world-class natural capital for a generic gaming model that alienates the families and wellness travelers who keep local small and medium enterprises alive year-round.

Still, shouting “No to gambling casinos in Boracay. Yes to development that protects families, dignifies work, and serves the common good” from the pulpit will not padlock a licensed casino that is already open.

Look closely at the bishops’ October 20 statement, though, and you will find an unusually pragmatic lifeline. They explicitly noted that social harms — mounting debts, broken trust, human trafficking, fraud — “should not be treated as inevitable or automatically attributed to every casino.”

That single concession is the lever Aklan and Malay officials should seize right now. If the state will not abolish the tables, local governments must cage them. Look at how Singapore’s Gambling Regulatory Authority insulates its citizens through a steep SGD 150 daily or SGD 3,000 annual entry levy for local residents paired with strict family exclusion orders.

Malay and Aklan should pass ironclad ordinances tomorrow barring Aklanons and island workers from the gaming floor. Golden TW Realty boasts that 40 percent of its staff are from Aklan — those workers should be bringing paychecks home to their kids, not feeding wages back into the house edge.

Mandate transparent revenue-sharing earmarked strictly for local healthcare and classrooms, enforce independent anti-trafficking audits, and write measurable social-cost benchmarks into local business permits so a spike in crime or household debt in Barangay Yapak automatically triggers an operational suspension.

If Manila insists on turning our best beach into a betting parlor, the people who actually live with the tide should at least write the house rules.