37th National Statistics Month, October 2026
Catbalogan City, Samar

Tuklas Catbalogan:Is the gateway city ready for tourism's return?

NSM 2026 theme: Tuklas Pilipinas: Statistics as Beacon Towards Inclusive, Resilient, and Sustainable Tourism

Visitors are back in Eastern Visayas, well above pre-pandemic levels. This dashboard uses official statistics to ask three questions about Catbalogan and Samar: did tourism recover, are its gains shared, and is growth sustainable? A fourth question is about the numbers themselves, because Catbalogan cannot steer what it does not count.

Find your barangay

Overview

Resilient: output recovery

Real hotel & restaurant output, 2019 = 100

Source: PSA Provincial Product Accounts, constant 2018 prices.

Inclusive: poverty incidence, 2023

Share of population below the poverty line (%)

Source: PSA 2023 Full Year Official Poverty Statistics.

Sustainable: where Catbalogan grew

People added, 2020–2024, by barangay type

Source: PSA 2024 and 2020 Censuses (2020 via PhilAtlas).

KPI sources: PSA 2024 Census of Population; PSA Provincial Product Accounts (released Oct 2026); PSA Full-Year Poverty Statistics 2023; DOT Region VIII as reported by The Chronicle, 8 Oct 2026. Details in Sources & Methodology.

Chapter 1: Resilient

Samar's tourism economy fell less than most in 2020, and has climbed back faster than most

The PSA's Provincial Product Accounts measure the value created by accommodation and food service activities (hotels, inns, restaurants), the industry most directly tied to visitors. We index each province's real output (constant 2018 prices) to 2019 = 100 to compare recoveries on one scale.

Real accommodation & food services output, 2019 = 100

Region VIII provinces and Tacloban City, 2018–2025

Source: PSA, Provincial Product Accounts, GDP by Industry, Province and HUC, at constant 2018 prices (OpenSTAT, accessed 19 Oct 2026). Index computed by the author.

Show data table

Visitors came back faster than the money

Region VIII, 2025 level as % of 2019

Overnight guests are at 161% of 2019, but real hotel-and-restaurant output is only at 71%. Output has not kept pace with visitor numbers.

Sources: overnight and same-day recovery from DOT Region VIII, reported in The Chronicle (8 Oct 2026); output from PSA Provincial Product Accounts. These are different measures (people vs. pesos), so read the comparison as a direction, not an exact ratio.

Nationally, tourism's share of the economy has not returned to its 2019 peak

Philippines: tourism direct gross value added as % of GDP, and tourism employment as % of total employment, 2000–2024

Source: PSA, Philippine Tourism Satellite Account, via SDG indicators 8.9.1.p1 and 8.9.s1 (OpenSTAT, accessed 19 Oct 2026). 2024 values are preliminary.

Show data table

Chapter 2: Inclusive

The recovery has yet to show in Samar's poverty numbers

Tourism is inclusive only if its gains reach local households and workers. Samar's poverty rate is double the national rate and has not fallen since 2018. Hotel workers in the region also earn far less than hotel workers nationally.

Poverty incidence among population (%)

Dot = point estimate · bar = 95% confidence interval · Samar Philippines / Region VIII other provinces

Source: PSA, 2023 Full Year Official Poverty Statistics, Table 2 (OpenSTAT, accessed 19 Oct 2026). Provincial estimates have wide margins of error; Samar's 2023 CV is 6.9%.

Show data table

Average annual pay per worker

Eastern Visayas vs. Philippines, 2022 (₱ thousand)

A worker in short-term accommodation in Eastern Visayas earned about ₱130k a year, 56% of the national average for the same industry.

Source: PSA, 2022 Annual Survey of Philippine Business and Industry (ASPBI), Accommodation and Food Service Activities (OpenSTAT, accessed 19 Oct 2026). Pay per worker = total compensation ÷ total employment, computed by the author. It includes unpaid workers in the divisor, so it understates the pay of paid employees.

Show data table

Output per person: Samar is second-lowest in Region VIII

Per capita GDP, 2025, at constant 2018 prices (₱)

Source: PSA, Provincial Product Accounts, Per Capita GDP by Province and HUC (OpenSTAT, accessed 19 Oct 2026).

Show data table

Chapter 3: Sustainable

Inside Catbalogan: where people live and where the city is growing

Sustainable tourism plans start from residents: where they live, how crowded each area is, and where growth is moving. The 2024 Census gives this for all 57 barangays. Pick a barangay to see its profile, or change the map measure.

Barangay map

Sources: PSA 2024 Census of Population, barangay tables (OpenSTAT); 2015 and 2020 barangay counts from PSA censuses as compiled by PhilAtlas; boundaries from faeldon/philippines-json-maps (PSGC 2023, from PSA/NAMRIA). Density uses polygon area and is approximate. Base map © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Top 10 barangays

By the measure selected on the map. The selected barangay is highlighted.

Source: PSA 2024 Census of Population; author's calculations.

Show all 57 barangays

Growth is moving to rural barangays

Change in population, 2020–2024, by PSA urban/rural class

Source: PSA 2024 Census of Population, urban classification by barangay; 2020 Census (via PhilAtlas). Catbalogan's density is 606 persons/km², four times the Samar average of 149 (PSA, 2024).

Chapter 4: The data gap

The beacon is dim where it matters most: we cannot count Catbalogan's visitors

Building this dashboard showed which tourism data exists, and at what level. Official figures are plentiful nationally and thin locally. The last city-level visitor count published by the DOT for Catbalogan is from 2017 (95,147 arrivals). In 2026, only about 50–60% of local governments in the region had submitted their tourism data.

Data gap tracker: what tourism data is publicly available, by level

Based on a search of PSA OpenSTAT, PSA RSSO VIII, the CPDCO data portal, DOT and news releases, 19 Oct 2026

✔ Available◐ Partial, news only or view only✕ Not public

Sources: see Sources & Methodology. "News only" means a DOT or PSA figure quoted in news, with no downloadable official table. "View only" means the figures are shown in an official online dashboard but cannot be downloaded as a table.

Key findings

Five things the numbers say

    So what?

    What city and barangay officials can do next

    Sources and methodology

    Where every number comes from

    Data sources

    1. PSA, 2024 Census of Population (POPCEN): total population, household population and number of households by barangay; urban classification by barangay; population, land area and density by city/municipality, 2015/2020/2024. PSA OpenSTAT tables 0081A6DTPH7, 0231A6DPUP0, 0221A6DLPD0. openstat.psa.gov.ph, accessed 19 Oct 2026.
    2. PSA, 2015 and 2020 Censuses, barangay counts, as compiled by PhilAtlas (philatlas.com/visayas/r08/samar/catbalogan.html). Barangay totals reconcile exactly with PSA city totals (103,879 and 106,440).
    3. PSA, Provincial Product Accounts 2018–2025: GDP by industry; GDP; per capita GDP. OpenSTAT tables 0022A5FPPA1, 0012A5FPPA0, 0092A5FPPA8. Values in ₱ thousand.
    4. PSA, Full Year Official Poverty Statistics 2018, 2021, 2023, Table 2 (poverty incidence among population, with CV and 95% CI). OpenSTAT 0031F3DF020.
    5. PSA, 2022 Annual Survey of Philippine Business and Industry, Accommodation and Food Service Activities, by region. OpenSTAT 0032D4BAI00.
    6. PSA, Philippine Tourism Satellite Account, via SDG indicators 8.9.1.p1 and 8.9.s1. OpenSTAT 0093I5C8911, 0103I5C89S1.
    7. DOT Region VIII visitor statistics, as reported in: The Chronicle, "Eastern Visayas tourism surpasses pre-pandemic levels, officials push better data reporting" (8 Oct 2026); Philippine News Agency, "Eastern Visayas posts P39-B tourist receipts in 2024" (2025); Leyte Samar Daily News, "Leyte is the most visited by tourists in the region last year" (5 Oct 2018).
    8. Barangay boundaries: faeldon/philippines-json-maps, 2023 PSGC vintage (derived from PSA/NAMRIA boundaries, MIT licence). Base map © OpenStreetMap contributors.
    9. CPDCO, Catbalogan City Planning Data Portal (cpdco.github.io/catbalogan-cbms-dashboard): CBMS 2022 and 2024 dashboards on Tableau Public, cited in the data gap tracker and limitations. Accessed 19 Oct 2026.
    10. NSM 2026 theme: PSA; Leyte Samar Daily News, "Tourism banners 37th National Statistics Month" (6 Oct 2026).

    Methods

    • Recovery index = real (constant 2018 prices) accommodation & food services GVA in year t ÷ the 2019 value × 100.
    • Annual growth rate, 2020–2024 = (P2024/P2020)1/4.17 − 1. Census reference dates are 1 May 2020 and 1 July 2024, which is 4.17 years apart.
    • Density (barangay) = 2024 population ÷ polygon area of the boundary file. It is approximate because PSA does not publish official barangay land areas in OpenSTAT. City and province densities are PSA's official figures.
    • Pay per worker = ASPBI total compensation ÷ total employment.
    • Accommodation & food services GVA share = the industry's GVA ÷ the sum of all 16 industries. We checked this sum against PSA's published provincial GDP; it matches within 0.1%.

    Limitations

    • Not all of Samar is Catbalogan. Economic and poverty statistics are only published down to the province (Samar). Catbalogan is Samar's capital, but its own values may differ.
    • Hotels and restaurants are not all tourism. Accommodation & food services output includes local residents' spending. It is a proxy for tourism activity, not the Tourism Satellite Account's tourism value added.
    • Visitor figures (DOT) come from local government and establishment reports. Coverage is incomplete (about 50–60% of local governments reporting in 2026), and the figures are quoted from news releases, not downloadable tables.
    • Poverty estimates are survey-based. Provincial confidence intervals overlap, so small differences between provinces are not statistically significant.
    • Barangay changes: very large changes (e.g., Poblacion 6, −16% a year) may reflect boundary, relocation or enumeration differences between censuses, not only migration.
    • CBMS data: the CPDCO publishes Catbalogan's CBMS 2022 and 2024 results (poverty, employment, education, health, housing) by barangay as view-only Tableau dashboards on its Catbalogan City Planning Data Portal, with data downloads turned off. They include no tourism indicators, so this dashboard does not reproduce CBMS figures and relies on downloadable PSA tables instead. The dashboard uses aggregate data only and contains no personally identifiable information.

    Download the cleaned data: barangays (CSV) · boundaries (GeoJSON) · hotel & restaurant output (CSV) · poverty (CSV) · DOT figures with citations (CSV). Raw files and the cleaning and verification scripts are included in the submission package.