Pinay makes good in ethnic travel

BONN, Germany – It always warms my heart to hear of success stories among the many Pinoys who end up living abroad. While we were at Hamburg, some Germans told me there is a very entrepreneurial Pinay who owns a successful chain of pastry shops. The nice thing about her, my German friends say, is that this Pinay is always ready to help her fellow Filipinos in need.

My packed schedule in Hamburg prevented me from tracking down this Pinay and getting a chance to interview her. Luckily, I met another entrepreneurial Pinay in Bonn, who has made a decent living running a travel service that specializes in what they call here as ethnic travel. Elda Falcon used to run the Koln sales office of Philippine Airlines, a long time ago when the national flag carrier was will flying to Europe. When PAL pulled out, she decided to stay.

Elda is now one of the unsung heroes of our so-called tourism industry. She mans the foxhole in the European front, so to speak, in this losing battle to get tourists to visit our country. Elda admits the effort is often frustrating, specially every time bad news from home hits the international news media. Elda also related a sad incident when she was with a group of European travel agents on a familiarization tour of the Philippines. They landed at NAIA, which is bad enough for initial impressions. Worse, they passed the streets of Pasay where they all saw mountains of uncollected garbage. She could see the negative reaction of the Europeans, less than an hour out of the jet liner that took them to our once fair shores.

But she confirmed what I had long been saying in this column. The only way to sell the Philippines to a larger market of quality tourists, is to forget Manila and directly land them in Cebu or Palawan and from there, the beaches. If we can only extend that airport in Caticlan and have direct flights from foreign cities land there, we should get good results.

The other problem with selling the Philippines is the pricing of our hotels and resorts. I have been saying the same thing in this column. We simply have to match the rates of Thai and Malaysian resorts if we want to get in the radar screens of travel planners. Then there is the problem of quality. Remember that bad experience I had in an allegedly five star beach resort in Bohol? You can’t charge world class rates with ants in your room, cable television that does not work and a restaurant that’s worse than a turo turo in terms of quality of menu offerings.

Still, Elda does her lonesome job of selling tours to the Philippines. Right now, she is working on families of Pinoys in Germany. Known as the ethnic market, it is an important segment that even the airlines that fly to Asia admit, saved them during the SARS problem. She is also selling tours to other parts of Asia but she works hardest on selling the Philippines, frustrating as the job may seem to be.

Actually, I honestly think she deserves a Kalakbay Award for selling the Philippines in Europe. Our tourism officials would find it useful to talk to her and get an education on how to do their jobs. She knows what it takes to bring tourists to our country better than the politicians and their protégés at the tourism department. She is actually doing it for a living for many years now.

And one more thing… she thinks PAL should resume their European flights. The void is being filled by airlines like Emirates and its cut rate tickets to Manila. She swears they were selling enough tickets for PAL to make money in the past. There is a growing Pinoy market from Europe and the Middle East and a Philippine carrier should capitalize on that.

In the meantime, thanks to people like Elda and her ethnic travel service, we somehow manage to remain in the radar screens of the European travel industry, even if just as a microscopic blip.

Air Pollution

The Germans are a funny people. They can be very fervently emotional about the need to keep the level of carbon emissions from cars and factories at the lowest level but ignore the most dangerous form of air pollution that they actually breathe. I am talking about all that cigarette smoke in public places that remains unchecked. I made this observation during a meeting with an official of the Environment Ministry here in Bonn and he could only agree. The official offered the information that the amount of dangerous particulates from one cigarette is equivalent to being exposed to noxious fumes from a diesel engine for 90 minutes. In other words, German outside air quality may be extremely better than Manila’s but indoor air quality, including right inside the lobby of the Environment Ministry, is extremely dangerous to one’s health.

Unfortunately, I exposed myself to more than 90 minutes of bad air one night this week when our group visited a typical German pub. The exposure was so bad I had to take Benadryl to alleviate my allergic reaction. And it is the same thing everywhere we go in every German city we have visited. The Germans just seem to be passionate smokers who have not heard of the health hazards of tobacco… or probably couldn’t care less. This is one time when I would rather be in New York City, whose Mayor Bloomberg managed to ban smoking even in bars and restaurants. Heck, even our very own Jojo Binay of Makati managed to impose the indoor ban on smoking. Alas, the German Environment Ministry official we talked to conceded that it was easier for them to ban nuclear plants forever on German soil but asking the German population to stop smoking in public indoor places may be asking too much.

So, next time you hear a German talk proudly of their clean air, tell him that’s a big baloney, a big German baloney not of the delicious type. The irony is, they spend more time indoors inhaling all that bad air rather than outdoors where they could enjoy their clean air.

Overall, I think we might even be ahead. But that does not mean we should lay down our effort to stop those air polluters on EDSA and elsewhere.

Manners

Now, here’s Dr. Ernie E.

During a good manners class, the teachers gave this situation to her students: if you were courting a well educated girl from a prominent family and during a dinner for two, you wanted to go to the toilet, what would you say to her?

One student replied, "wait a minute, I’m going for a pee." The teacher said, "that would be very rude an improper for a girl of good breeding."

Another student volunteered, "I’m sorry I have to go to the toilet, I’ll be back in a minute."

The teacher said, "that’s better but not to mention toilet during a meal. It’s unpleasant."

Still another student said, "My dear, please excuse me for a moment. I have to shake hands with a personal friend, whom I hope to be able to introduce to you later."

The teacher fainted.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is bchanco@gmail.com