Our tourism goals: A tragedy for Cebu!

Oscar Wilde once quipped, "There are two tragedies in life… one is when you don’t get what you want and the other is, when you get it!" I guess you can say much about this with Cebu now that we got what we wanted — for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (PGMA) to become the 14th President of this land. Even before the elections, President Arroyo revealed during our television interview with her that she would be transferring the head office of the Department of Tourism (DOT) to Cebu. Well, now that she has a new term, the transfer of the DOT office is all but inevitable.

Enter former Tourism Secretary, now Sen. Richard "Dick" Gordon who spoke openly about the serious problems Cebu has to hurdle before we can achieve our goal of being a premier tourism destination. Of course, the answer to this is… that’s the reason why we need the tourism office transferred here in the first place so that the government can truly and seriously take a look at the present situation and work out a plan to make things right for Cebu. If need be, we have Sen. Dick Gordon to sponsor any such bills that would uplift the tourism potential of Cebu. I’m sure Dick would not deny us his support.

But first things first. When Sen. Gordon said that we lacked hotels, he wasn’t insulting us or making fun of Cebu… Dick knows the tourism industry after all. If the tourists are coming to the Philippines in droves today, we should give credit where credit is due… this is due to Dick’s WOW campaign! Of course, current Tourism Secretary Obet Pagdanganan is enjoying this windfall. But I submit that there’s just a lot of things we need to do to get things right.

For instance, Cebu needs to open more hotel rooms. The issue of lack of hotel rooms became a serious problem when the Cebu Plaza Hotel shut down its operations a year ago. Things were looking bright a few years back when Henry Sy erected what would have been the Sheraton Hotel right beside SM City. Alas, Cebu Plaza Hotel closed and Henry Sy merely built the shell of what should have been the Sheraton, but didn’t open it. So yes, we do have a serious hotel room problem… hopefully, Cebu Plaza Hotel might re-open this year. But what of the Sheraton Hotel? If you ask me, Cebuano officials should convince Henry Sy to finally get the Sheraton operational.

In Mactan Island, there are two major hotel properties: the Shangri-La’s Mactan Island Resort and Plantation Bay Resort Hotel, which we know is always full… it has become the butt of criticism by Manila columnists trying to get a room. Indeed, it is true that it is easier for them to get a hotel room in Singapore or Hong Kong than at these two fabulous Mactan resort hotels. Frankly speaking, it is called the Law of Supply and Demand.

For as long as there are only two top-rated hotels where tourists would pay top dollar, these hotels would never drop their room rates. Hopefully, my friend, Manny Osmeña’s Hilton Hotel would soon be opening right beside the Shangri-La so he could offer a little competition to these two properties. Of course, there’s the other resort hotels in Mactan, like Maribago Bluewaters, Tambuli and White Sands which are doing a great job in getting tourists to Cebu.

With the opening of the South Coastal Road and when the South Road to Carcar is finished, better believe that resort hotels south of Cebu City like Pulchra and tourists going to Moalboal would greatly benefit from this. Which reminds me of the ill-fated Argao Beach Resort, which the Philippine Tourism Authority (PTA) virtually ran to the ground. Here in Cebu, the PTA is the exact opposite of the Midas Touch… while whatever King Midas touched turned to gold, here whatever the PTA touches loses money. But better than Midas, they get away with it scot-free without any investigations!

This brings me back to my old pet peeve: during the Ramos presidency, the PTA literally gave away the Kang-Irag Golf Course up in the mountains of Busay to Jose Go of Ever Gotesco. Well, it’s been eight years since the Gotesco Group took over the Kang-Irag Golf Course and nothing has returned to the coffers of the national government. There are hundreds of fruit-bearing mango trees in Kang-Irag and it just makes me wonder who is making tons of money on mangoes grown on government property? Surely, someone from the PTA knows about or is profiting from this!

Perhaps this should be something that Sen. Dick Gordon ought to have investigated in the Senate. After all, for better or for worse, this is one of their important roles. Yes, it is time to investigate why the PTA didn’t rescind the Gotesco contract, which has more than proven to be disadvantageous… call it disastrous to the government. Mind you, the Kang-Irag Golf Course was already a playable course where tourists could come and play. I recall the last time I played there was with Sen. Serge Osmeña.

But as we all know, hotel rooms are not just what the tourists come to Cebu. They would love to come to a city where the beaches are great, the people give big smiles, the shopping is great and there are a lot of tourist attractions to visit.

What about cleanliness and the attitude of the Cebuanos? Believe me, our local officials have to instill real discipline in the way we carelessly throw our garbage anywhere. Sure, we have a lot of laws which declare, "No dumping of garbage," with fines and penalties attached to scare people from doing this. But are the people scared? No way! That’s because to date, I haven’t seen a single person locked in jail for indiscriminately disposing of his garbage.

But please, don’t tell me that Filipinos cannot be clean. Just ask… why is the City of Olongapo clean? Don’t Filipinos live in that city? Davao is also just as clean, which means that local governments are doing something about people who make their cities or towns dirty, and this is something that the metro cities of Cebu and the province must work on in unison. My friend, Joel Mari Yu of the Cebu Investment Promotion Center (CIPC), once told me that "Cebu is like a pretty but unkempt girl, who wears no make-up and is so untidy." Indeed, this is our wake-up call… that the President wants Cebu to be a premier tourist destination and that’s the tragedy we have to face to make the place appealing to tourists.

Don’t you think that it is time for Cebu to establish a culture of tourism so we can do away with the ugly Batestil incident… where an ugly taxi driver who doesn’t even come from Cebu would virtually scare away the US 7th Fleet from the shores of Cebu? Yes, if we have to develop our tourism infrastructure, we should also develop a culture of tourism and it starts from within ourselves!

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com. He also hosts a weekly talk show, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, at 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.