CEBU, Philippines - In its bid to fully regain what used to be Cebu’s top market, the Japanese tourists, the Hotels, Resorts and Restaurant Association of Cebu (HRRAC) will initiate a sales and marketing mission to Japan by September of this year.
HRRAC is also planning to join hands with the Spa and Wellness Association of Cebu (SWAC) to strengthen its bid in attracting more Japanese tourists to the province, said HRRAC president Marco Protacio.
“Japanese nationals are our most preferred tourists,” said Protacio adding that arrival figures of this particular market had been steady or worst, has even dwindled in the last five years.
He said HRRAC, together with other industry players, especially the wellness sector should move to regain the interest of Japanese travelers to Cebu by selling the latter as an “Island Resort Destination” or “Island Getaway.”
“Because of too many travel bans issued against the Philippines, we are no longer the ‘talk of town’ among Japanese travelers. We want to revive this market seriously,” Protacio said.
He said this is one of the very important advocacies of HRRAC starting this year, aside from its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) projects, like supporting education to underprivileged community members.
The group will touch base with travel operators and agents in Osaka and Nagoya in Japan, Protacio said.
While Japanese tourists are not only interested in the “sun and sand”, but also most of them are demanding for wellness services, the Spa and Wellness industry here should also join this mission.
Protacio hopes that the group will gain support from the Department of Tourism (DOT), while HRRAC is planning to schedule the sales mission in time during the DOT Travel Mart in Japan sometime in September.
Japanese tourists are the second largest foreign visitors to Cebu, and Central Visayas. In three months, arrivals of Japanese nationals to Cebu, went down due to the widespread effect of global economic meltdown, said Department of Tourism (DOT-7) regional director Patria Aurora Roa.
DOT on the other hand vowed to invest on bringing big tourists delegations from Japan to Cebu, such as divers, travel agents, in order for Japanese tourists to reconsider Cebu, which was once the Japanese' top leisure destination in the pre-1997 years.
DOT is aiming to reach 400,000 Japanese arrivals this year, from 359,000 in 2007 and 276,671 in 2006. Thus, budget allocation for marketing campaigns in Japan, is being beefed up with the department, said DOT secretary Joseph Ace Durano.
Earlier Durano announced that aside from health and wellness component which is expected to draw more Japanese tourists to Cebu once again, DOT is also adding another activity to heighten Japanese tourists' interest here that is to actively position Cebu as a premier "Wedding Destination."
Durano said that while his department is pushing the Philippines as premier "Wedding Destination" in Asia, Cebu has been made the center of this campaign.— Ehda M. Dagooc