RP pushed as vacation site of choice for Japanese execs

TOKYO, Japan – The Department of Tourism (DOT) is wooing Japan’s corporate leisure market such as car manufacturer Toyota Motors and consumer electronics giant Samsung in South Korea to make the Philippines the choice vacation destination of their respective companies’ top-level executives and employees.

"We are tapping the corporate leisure market which is still largely untapped. We are actively pursuing this strategy to boost our tourism efforts," said DOT Secretary Joseph Ace Durano during the third-leg of the Philippine Business Mission.

While in Japan, Durano met with several top-brass executives of big companies with existing business in the Philippines such as Toyota Motors which has a car assembly plant in the Philippines.

In a recent marketing campaign in China, the DOT team led by Durano was able to persuade multinational SC Johnson and Johnson to make a vacation to the Philippines part of the perks of their company’s executives.

Japan is one of the three priority markets of the DOT, aside from China and Korea, for attracting inbound visitors to the Philippines, with Japan the country’s largest source of market for tourist arrivals next to the United States.

"The corporate leisure market is a year-round market and this assures our local tourism trade of visitors even during the off-peak or lean months. At the same time, we are able to maximize the tourism industry’s existing capacity and get the quality tourists who have the money to spend," said Durano.

The DOT roadshow here in Japan completes the third leg of its three-country tourism marketing mission.

Durano said earlier that he expects Japanese tourist arrivals in the Philippines to reach one million by 2008.

Durano said that to achieve the government’s target, tourist arrivals from Japan will have to increase by at least 25 percent until 2008. Last year, Japanese tourist arrivals totaled 382,000, up 18.4 percent from 2003.

He noted that from 1990 to 2000, Japanese tourists in the Philippines posted an average increase of 5.8 percent and in 2004, rising by a significant 18.4 percent, the highest percentage increase in Japanese arrivals to the country in more than 20 years.

For the first quarter of 2005, arrivals improved 7.8 percent compared to the same period in 2004.

To capture a bigger share of the Japanese market, the DOT and its marketing arm, the Philippine Convention and Visitors Corp. (PCVC) led by its deputy executive director Rosvi C. Gaetos, are implementing an integrated marketing plan that will not only focus on the traditionally male market, but will also tap the growing 30s to 50s female market.

DOT also hired a Japanese public relations agency early this year to launch its "Premium Resort Islands" or "Koko Doko" which ensured wider exposure in Japanese print and television media.

The campaign locked in on Manila and Cebu as the gateway to similar resort cities such as Davao, Bohol and Palawan which are also rich in tourist attractions, and in Subic and Clark freeport zones.

As part of the marketing scheme, thousands of information materials were printed in Japanese, including a "Premium Philippines" website, also in Japanese language.

The DOT is also participating in the 2005 World Expo which is being hosted by Japan and has tied up with a major wholesaler in the Chubu area to launch two consumer promotions. The "Travel Holiday" promo will raffle off 100 tour packages to Japanese visitors to the Philippine Pavilion where winners can choose between Manila and Cebu as their preferred prize.

Under the "Win an Island" promo, lucky Japanese winners will have one island in One Hundred Islands in Alaminos, Pangasinan, named after them for a year.