Cebu tourism: Dare on the uncommon

Like Morocco, Egypt, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand and tiny island nations like Fiji, the country’s tourism is largely significant due to the huge intake of money it derives for businesses. Undeniably, the tourism industry favorably affects many industries. It offers a lot of employment opportunities in the service industries associated with it. These service industries include, among others, the transport services such as rent-a-car and taxis, accommodation such as hotels and entertainment venues, and other hospitality and wellness businesses like spas and resorts.

Recognizing its potentials, Cebu isn’t letting this opportunity pass our way unnoticed. To the tourism department’s credit, this is one industry we really are trying to develop to the max. Through our annual Sinulog festival, forums and fairs, we are able to promote the country’s tourism investment potentials and places of interest for opportunity-seeking business travelers and leisure lovers, respectively, on a sustained basis. Promotions and campaigns are appropriately made both here and abroad. Informative tarps are hanged and plastered in domestic and international airport terminals and seaports. Substantial amounts are also spent on TV, radio and print advertisements.

Indeed, the hype for tourism has always been great and undoubtedly expensive. Government officials (except for someone who is doing it merely for publicity stunts to strengthen her political clout) and major players are giving it immeasurable boost not just to stay afloat but to let it remain a viable undertaking.

Lately, however, apart from the usual sights, traditional activities and countless festivals, Cebu is also starting to position itself as having the capabilities for medical tourism and sports tourism. While we are too optimistic about their prospects due to our relative success in traditional tourism, it seems that we did not realize that medical tourism and sports tourism are totally different from the rest. 

The medical tourism, for instance, is not a tour or travel for predominantly recreational or leisure purposes but out of necessity. Mindfully, it is not a kind tourism where even a commercial sex worker can get involve. It needs huge investments in hospital equipment and the best in our already depleted number of health practitioners.

Yes, it is true that medical tourism is growing rapidly. However, there are many factors that led to the increasing prominence of medical travel and not all success ingredients in traditional tourism can be counted upon. Principally, the reasons run from high cost of their countries’ health care to longer waiting times for certain treatments or procedures. Coupled with the ease and affordability of international travel and the vastly improved technology and health care standards in other countries, medical travel has been viewed as truly the sunny side of tourism. 

Medical tourists are coming from anywhere in the globe. They are coming from the wealthy nations in Europe, Middle East, Japan, the United States and Canada. These are countries with relatively large moneyed populations and have high cost of health care.

However, just because there is a huge market is not enough reason for us to join the bandwagon. A huge potential market doesn’t assure us of success. This potential market is knowledgeable enough to know where to get treatment. Without doing an honest assessment of our real worth or capabilities, we will only end up salivating while staring at a huge market that we can’t tap.

On the other hand, sports tourism has a different emphasis. It is not enough that we have great fighters and world class stables     of boxers. If this is a requisite then Las Vegas, Nevada will never become a home of great fights and bankable sports tourism because it only has one notable world boxing champion, Floyd Mayweather (not even a native Las Vegan). 

Sports, as a form of entertainment, could have been better than concerts because of pride and patriotism that is attached to it. However, like concerts, we need big-time and well-oiled promoters who can willingly put their money on the line. We need the likes of Bob Arum, Oscar de la Hoya, Gary Shaw, etc. to see the dream fights go. Do we have them in our midst? Even if they are, they will only do so if they profit from it. To make certain, they would like to see those amusement taxes gone or, at least, brought down almost to the ground. 

Though this could encourage promoters to bet even their last underwear, we must also realize that not having amusement taxes does not necessarily lead to more productions of big events at all. While it encourages and financially helps promotions, concerns on venues are not necessarily addressed. If the intention really is to promote sports tourism and have more opportunities to see international sports spectacles at affordable prices, we need to have at least one comfortable and inexpensive venue. Since even a replica of Venetian Macao could still be considered ambitious, a modest counterpart of Quezon City’s Araneta Coliseum can be a viable option. Seeing this realized, we can expect patronage not just among Cebuanos and our neighbors in the Visayas and Mindanao provinces but foreign visitors as well. Consequently, we can expect higher hotel occupancy rate and boost tourism.

Ironically, despite these basic but unattended concerns, we brag about the potentials of our medical tourism and sports tourism capabilities. Is having advanced equipment not an issue for medical tourists? Aren’t they coming here to get cured or healed? What assurance can we give them when a basic issue like depleting number of health care   professionals can’t be even appropriately addressed? On the other hand, what world class competition or fight can you expect from an oven-hot coliseum? 

We truly understand the necessity of promoting our tourism potentials both here and abroad. The need to inform potential market of our capabilities is unquestionable. In doing so however, we must not forget that like any business, the key to any success is continued patronage. This can only be achieved once we can develop a strong customer base that will not only give us repeat businesses but shall tell the world of our unparalleled capabilities.  

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