City team promotes Cebu to Singapore, Malaysia

CEBU, Philippines - To take advantage of the growing travel market of Singapore and Malaysia as well as the increasing frequency of regional flights between the Philippines and these two ASEAN countries, the Cebu City Tourism Commission conducted the recently concluded 1st Cebu Sales Mission.

Cinbeth Orellano, CCTC executive director, said that this project was made in answer to the call of the Cebu’s tourism stakeholders, who want to increase their visibility in the two markets and capitalize on the increasing air traffic between these three countries.

“They wanted to have a more focused, comprehensive and extensive promotion of Cebu and its properties,” she said.

CCTC had varied objectives in the inaugural project which is to introduce and promote Cebu to the Malaysian and Singaporean Travel Market as a leisure, MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) and shopping destination and to increase Singapore and Malaysian tourist arrivals to Cebu.

They wanted to encourage travel exchange between Cebu and the two ASEAN nations as reasonable cost carriers are making air travel cheaper.

“The main aim of the sales mission is to promote Cebu as leisure, MICE, shopping, trade and investment destination. Cebu is already a top destination in the Philippines but has barely tapped the Malaysian and Singaporean travel markets,” Orellano said.

She further stated that evidence to her statement is that out of the 79,694 Malaysian tourists who visited the Philippines in 2010 —the highest record of Malaysian arrivals to the Philippines— only 3,619 or about 4.54 percent of them visited Cebu.

The same goes for Singapore which has posted 121,083 tourist arrivals in the Philippines in 2010 but only 9,740 or 8.04 percent visited Cebu.

Orellano said that last year, Philippine Department of Tourism Malaysian representative Melissa Ong, together with Malaysian sales agent Rocky Kho, came to the Philippines and delivered the good news about the expanding Malaysian tourist market.

“With more and more people capable of traveling outside Malaysia, Malaysians, especially the younger generation, are getting bolder in exploring new and exciting destinations —one of which could be the Philippines. Of the Philippine destinations familiar to Malaysians, Mr. Rocky Kho identified Cebu and Bohol as two of the three destinations frequented by Malaysians,” Orellano said.

After the sales mission, organizers are expecting that tourism interest in Cebu will increase tourist arrivals from both countries to Cebu.

This promotion is in line with the proposed 2012–2016 National Tourism Development Plan, where Singapore and Malaysia have both been identified as “strategic markets”, where strengthening of the ASEAN markets is going to be prioritized. 

At the moment, Cebu already has three direct flights to and from Singapore —two of which are daily flights. The coming in of Air Asia into the Philippines and the plan to create a Philippine subsidiary is seen to increase tourist arrivals from Malaysia and Singapore.     - THE FREEMAN