Hospitality industry stays upbeat amid crisis threats

"We are doing well and there is no reason to panic yet. Crisis is not new to us and our industry is the most resilient as we are used to balancing the law of supply and demand," announced Marco Protacio, president of Hotels, Resorts and Restaurants Association of Cebu and Waterfront Cebu City Hotel and Casino general manager in yesterday's 888 News Forum.

The forum gathered major stakeholders in Cebu’s hospitality industry with top executives from major hotels in the city such as Waterfront Hotel and Casino, Marriot Cebu City Hotel, Marco Polo Plaza Cebu, Parklane International Hotel, Cebu Grand Hotel and the Mango Park Hotel.

Protacio said that amidst the looming economic recession experienced by the global market today, their sector remains optimistic as tourists from all over the world continue to travel in the country especially new foreign markets.

He said that the first quarter of this year indicated a positive movement to their sector as they continue to generate a good volume of bookings for the first two months of this year.

“The frequency of flights, the airline rates has also something to do with the volume of business that we are getting so we hope that this will be stable for the year. Cautioning the impacts of the crisis is a unified effort of the tourism industry,” said Protacio.

“There is a cloud of crisis looming everyone right now but we believe that there is an opportunity to grow in every crisis and we remain positive as much as we can. We should think beyond 2009 so the challenge will seem to be trivial if we look at it that way,” he added.

Cebu City Marriott Hotel director for operations Dottie Viajar- Wurgler said that although they have noticed a reduction of business for this year as results of the world-wide crisis, they have been encouraged by the turn out of their January volume.

"We still continue to see positive indications in the month of January this year and we continue to balance the business despite the downtrend not just because of the growth of the leisure market but because of the continued influx of investments in the BPO sector. The number of visitors in the recent Sinulog may have declined but majority of hotels in the city continued to enjoy a peak of occupancy on that period,” said Wurgler.

Cenelyn Maguilimotan, general manager of Cebu Parklane International Hotel said that the increasing number of domestic tourists going to Cebu is also a good indication that Filipinos are now exploring other areas and that Cebu has become a popular tourist destination for both leisure and entertainment not only for foreigners but also with the locals.

Meanwhile, Hans Hauri, Marco Polo general manager said that the leveling off of the demand in the tourism industry resulting from the flat backs in the market is only “temporary” and they are still seeing positive business movements as Asia, which is the largest tourism markets of most Cebu hotels is still not gravely affected by the worsening recession in the West and in fact the traveling patterns of Filipino “balikbayans” continue to show healthy signs.

“Most of the hotels here in Cebu had successful year-ends and we had a great Sinulog festival. Right now, we are talking with airline companies and tour operators to keep their value packages”.