Bohol’s tourism: Preventing rural exodus
With the theme, “Pull Ahead”, as the battle cry, the participants tackled, among others, topics regarding the CPAs’ competitiveness in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC).
Indeed, ASEAN is now transformed into one community. It simply means freer trade of both goods and services among the ASEAN countries. Consequently, we are now among an economic market of about 600 million people or about 8 percent of the global population. We are in an aggrupation of countries whose size can possibly leverage against first world countries and some dominant countries or other unions of countries like China and the European Union, respectively.
However, though the very essence of the integration is cooperation, which necessitates that member countries complement each other, competition within is still inevitable. In preparing for it, countries like Singapore will have approaches totally different from ours. Undoubtedly though, each country’s ability to strengthen their micro and small enterprises, generate foreign direct investments (FDIs), and lure tourism industry players will be brought to fore.
In us, strengthening micro and small enterprises could be tough. As we all know, most of our micro and small enterprises would prefer to go underground for one reason or another. Likewise, our FDI initiatives would seem to be an uphill climb too. For one, in the ASEAN right now, Singapore is cornering the biggest chunk of FDIs. With the government’s unbending stance as far as amending some economic provisions of the constitution as well as the removal of some restrictions in the Foreign Investments Negative List (FINL), we have become the least preferred destination of FDIs. Consequently, we simply placed 6th and is among the laggards in the ASEAN in this respect. We are way behind Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Viet Nam.
Nevertheless, tourism’s potential cannot be overlooked. The fact is, even if some countries in the world maybe in chaos, globally, tourism has continued to flourish. A survey published by the World Economic Forum (The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2015) confirms this. Topped by Spain, it seems that it has even continued to grow in Europe (majority of the top ten countries are in Europe) despite threats in the entire continent.
Clearly, therefore, the T&T sector remains very significant for the world economy. It accounts, among others, a sizeable share of global employment and has also provided an important opportunity for developing countries to improve and aim for bigger shares of the pie. Consequently, uniquely blessed with at least 7,100 islands, we aren’t letting this opportunity pass our way unnoticed.
Notably, after being named in 2013 as the “most improved country” in the Asia Pacific region, “ranking 16th regionally and 82nd overall”, up 12 places since the 2011 survey, we are now ranked “14th regionally and 74th overall.”
We ranked highly on account of our strengths in natural resources, price competitiveness, and a very strong—and improving — prioritization of the Travel & Tourism industry. Moreover, our marketing and branding campaigns are also seen to be increasingly effective.
Indeed, this upbeat news is very encouraging globally. However, nationally, tourism remains a big concern. While the country is now ranked 82nd, other countries in the ASEAN, likewise, improved their rankings. So that among the ASEAN member nations, we remain in 6th place, a very far 6th behind Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia and Viet Nam.
Why are these countries ahead of us? The answer is very simple, the lack of tourism-related infrastructure. Take the case of Bohol, Panglao Island, in particular. With poor inadequate roads in the 1980s, Panglao Island was hardly accessible. Thus, it never brought in so much visitors.
Last weekend, it will just take us several minutes to hop from one resort to another. Notably, the crowd was a good mix of Caucasians and Asians. Decent entertainments abound and tourists are partying and frolicking night and day with their friends and families.
So that, as the ASEAN, as a whole, entertains nearly 100 million tourists annually and gears up for ecotourism, we (all LGUs) should likewise prepare by replicating what Bohol did. Remember, we already have interesting destinations. The only concern is, making these spots reachable. Just requiring roads, these will only need minimal investment. With such minimal investment, it shall generate jobs and certainly reinvigorate the countryside. Consequently, it shall prevent rural flight or rural exodus.
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