The good and bad for the tourism industry

Over the weekend, I watched the BBC News program called “Fast Track” which featured the Global Summit on Tourism held in Abu Dhabi last April 9-10, with no less than former US President Bill Clinton and actress Daryl Hannah talking about tourism’s long term potential that most countries must embrace. Indeed, we in the Philippines don’t need to be told that tourism is the best industry that would keep our economy stable. But our biggest threat is not the lack of tourists, but unfortunately it’s our own government, wherein our bureaucrats cannot see the future of tourism.

Last weekend, the Cebu media was invited to the fabulous Bellevue Resort in Panglao, Bohol for the blessing of the new Pavilion, an air-conditioned tent and the opening of its Marea Restaurant, the Azurea Spa. These are tourist facilities that are badly needed in the Island of Bohol, more so that Malacañang just announced last Thursday that foreign tourist arrivals for the first quarter of this year has reached 1,271,579 or 10.76% growth, which is up from last year’s growth of 1,148,072. This is great news!

While we greet this good news with elation, however as a journalist, it is also our duty to bring you the bad news. Late Saturday afternoon, we took the 4:20 p.m. Ocean Jet back to Cebu. This route was once popularized by the SuperCat of the Aboitiz Shipping. They changed the name to 2GO and eventually sold it to Negros Navigation a couple of years ago. How things have changed since. If fewer people now take the 2GO Fastcraft, it is because they have become notorious in cancelling trips without any warning or notice to passengers, and MARINA isn’t doing anything about it.

Worse for Bohol’s growing tourism is that their Port Terminal can no longer handle the huge number of tourists that come for a visit. The old and decrepit terminal was perfect some 10 years ago when Bohol didn’t have a tourism industry to speak of. But at this time especially with the opening of the Bellevue Resort in Panglao Island, tourists are coming in droves and local domestic tourists are competing for space in that cramp Port Terminal.

Alas, I do not see any future renovation or the construction of a new port terminal for Bohol, otherwise I would have seen it in our documents in the Regional Development Council (RDC-7) as Bohol is part of Region 7. If we bring in more tourists to Bohol and we don’t fix our Port infrastructure, you can bet that those tourists who come for a visit will be one-time visitors only.  Mind you, we write these articles in the hope that our government would know the pressing realities and that they’d fix the problem.

Incidentally, during the blessing of the Bellevue Pavilion, aside from Bellevue chairman Johnny Chan, I also met Sir Arthur Lopez, president of the Philippine Hotel Federation, Inc. A week ago, we wrote about the open letter that the Hotel Federation published in the STAR, which made an appeal to President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III to revoke the Board of Investment’s (BOI) Regulation no. 2013-001 which was approved last March 5, 2013 that imposed locational restrictions and granting very limited incentives to “projects on accommodation establishments” located in the four major tourism areas of Metro Manila, Cebu City, Mactan Island and Boracay Island.”

Eager to know what happened since, I asked Sir Arthur whether the Aquino Regime responded to that open letter. Sir Arthur shrugged his shoulders and sighed…nothing! He added that the reason why his group came up with that open letter was in reaction to a letter he sent to the Board of Investments (BOI) via Usec Adrian Cristobal Jr. last March 19 for the BOI to reconsider its decision. But he got no response there. Now he also got no response from Malacañang. Was this a Presidential snub?

What can I say? But doesn’t anyone in Malacañang know about Republic Act. 6713? That’s “An act establishing a code of conduct and ethical standards for Public Officials and Employees to uphold the time honored principle of public office being a public trust, granting incentives and rewards for exemplary service, enumerating prohibited acts and transactions and providing penalties for violators thereof and other purposes.”

At this point, I made this suggestion to Sir Arthur Lopez to file an ethics case against the people in BOI or Malacañang who did not respond to his letter and let’s see if the Office of the Ombudsman would move its butt. Now about Malacañang Palace…what if they lost Sir Arthur’s letter? Isn’t this what Malacañang spokesmen admitted or declared that they lost the letter of Sultan Kiram that he sent to Pres. Aquino?

At this point, we exhort Malacañang to heed the request of the Hotel Federation as our tourism growth depends on foreign and Filipino investors who will plunk their money if there are incentives for this industry. If those incentives are removed, then don’t expect any growth in our tourism.

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