Tourism-dependent islands’ responses to the challenge of tourists ‘of Asian Origin’ The Cases of Boracay Island, Aklan; Puerto Galera, Oriental Mindoro; & Coron Palawan in the Philippines By: Romeo B. Santos, Ph. D. Professor University of the Philippines, College of Architecture Abstract: This study looked into how three popular tourism island destinations in the Philippines respond to the challenge posed by the changing nature of tourists. The paper proposes a knowledge representation model to illustrate and explain the complex process between the tourists‟ consumption of a place and how the influences emanating from it manifest in the local contexts of culture and the environment of the island destinations. Following the pattern set by the model, the case study identifies manifestation of effects both in the physical and non-physical aspects of the local cultural landscape and the spatial character of the environment of the islands. It recommends further study on this subject. Keywords: ‘Tourists of Asian origin’, touristic consumption, behavio-spatial correspondence, local cultural landscape I. Background The Philippines is one of South East Asian countries gifted with places where nature is said to be at its best. These places serve as destinations for tourists coming from various origins many of them seeking the „legendary‟ beauty of tropical paradise. Foremost of these are terrific island spots that possess natural features unique to each island. A couple of decades ago, the bulk of tourists coming to the Philippines were mainly from North America and Europe. In the recent years however, a visible change in the type of arriving tourists has been observed. The number of western tourist declines, while the ones originating from Asia continue to increase and composed mainly of people coming from South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and the mainland China. This shift in the „nature‟ of tourism, i.e., towards one that is dominated by „tourists of Asian origin‟ may have far reaching implications. And the phenomenon in fact, is of paramount interest to many especially to people in Architecture, a field which is concerned with how the built environment is affected by human activities. In line with this premise, the study, from which this paper takes off as an offshoot, seeks to determine how the changing nature of tourists effects changes in