Cebu tourism changes course of campaign to other markets

CEBU, Philippines - While the tourism sector expressed disappointment on the travel ban issued by China against the Philippines, players are getting its confidence of a sustained tourism growth by attracting alternative markets especially in the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nation) areas.

 “China is one of the fastest growing markets we are targeting so this will definitely be a setback for us. But by now, we should be ready for all these advisories and be resilient. So it’s good that the Department of Tourism has been nurturing other markets so that when we get a hiccup every now and then we have other markets to cushion the effect,” said tourism advocate and capitalist Jay P. Aldeguer.

Hotel, Resort, and Restaurant Association of Cebu (HRRAC) president Hans Hauri on the other hand, expressed his dismay saying “recognizing that the China market produced some 15,000 room nights for Cebu and Bohol in June, July and August of 2010 prior to the hostage crisis at Quirino Grandstand in Manila, then, we can estimate what the loss will be this year.”

Hauri said that the hospitality industry is shocked but not necessarily surprised at the reactions from China, “but what can we say other than the Philippines has made strategic decision and now we get the reaction. The situation is untimely, just as we are getting the orders from the peak season of July and August.”

Because of this, Hauri said the country is sitting on “empty rooms”, a perishable commodity, add-on all the fruits ready for export but now rejected.

Although, he believes that the Philippines will be able to get considerable arrivals from other ASEAN countries, he said the full-blown promotional campaign launched by DOT, now is “waste of perishable commodity—money.”

“We are not in politics but our business raise or fall with government decisions. The private sector was never consulted. So, where is the highly publicized aim of creating PPP? (Public-private- partnership)—a partnership through building consensus?” he said.

Hauri added that among HRRAC members, players are now changing the course of promotions to ASEAN markets as the last remaining source of business.

He said long haul routes, like USA and Europe are already severely affected by the high fuel cost and major carriers now resorting to cost-cutting and “moth-balling” surplus or high operating cost aircrafts.

Prior to the travel ban of the Republic of China government against the Philippines, the DOT has announced its plan to attract considerable number of Chinese tourist getting a bigger chunk of the 88 million Chinese who are expected to travel outside of their country in the next four years.

According to DOT, the Philippines is counting the Chinese market as one of the top growth drivers for tourism arrivals in the Philippines, while it has seen a significant turn-around of arrivals from China in the last few months.                                                          

In an earlier interview with DOT undersecretary for tourism planning and promotions Daniel G. Corpuz, he reported that as of January of this year about 42,000 Chinese tourists visited the different destinations in the country.

Today, the Philippines’ top five markets are Korea, USA, Japan, China, and the ASEAN. Aside from the aggressive promotional campaign, Corpuz said DOT will also pressure other government agencies to make complimentary programs to boost tourism, specifically the DOTC (Department of Transportation and Communication).

Aside from Chinese, the Philippines is also seeing fast arrivals from other ASEAN markets, such as South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and India.

The Philippines through the DOT is setting a target of reaching 10 million foreign tourist arrivals by 2016, while 35 million Filipinos to travel within the country.

If this target will be realized, the country is up to generate US$9.2 billion tourism revenue receipts for foreign visitors, while P1.8 trillion is expected to be generated from the active domestic market.

At present, the Philippines is getting 3.97 million tourist arrivals. The number one market for the Philippines, tourists from Korea is seen to hit the one million mark by the end of this year.

Arrivals from emerging Australian market also posted an increase of 17 percent in the past couple of months. While, tourists’ arrival from Taiwan also improved by 20 percent.