Fix Boracay or lose a gem

BORACAY – It has been four years since I was last in Boracay and I still get strong mixed feelings about this gem of an island. Actually, Boracay reminds me of our country — blessed by nature and being wasted by man. More than ever, I think we ought to engage in one big and honest effort to fix Boracay or lose this gem. The clock is ticking, even if people there do their best to ignore it.

In fairness, I noticed some improvements during this visit. There seems to be an effort to organize those who live by the fruits of the tourist trade. Even the vendors are organized, with proper identification and shirts that describe what they are authorized to sell. There is good police visibility with police officers in beach appropriate attire doing foot patrols. There also seems to be an effort to at least present an outward semblance of cleanliness all around.

But I get the feeling that the island is about to sink in the weight of all the businesses trying to get a share of the lucrative tourist trade. There are so many new constructions going on, mostly hotels that will soon add to the 6,000 rooms or so already available on the island. I understand that over 500,000 tourists visit Boracay every year now and I doubt if the island can carry a million tourists and still be viable in terms of amenities like clean water being available unless they follow some overall plan.

The allure of Boracay has spread far and wide. A group of Russian tourists arrived last Monday from Vladivostok in the Russian Far East to Boracay. Some of them were guests in the same hotel I was staying. From what I have seen and overheard while going around the island, every major nationality appears to be represented at any given time from Koreans and Japanese to Americans, Australians and Europeans.

I am also sure that they leave Boracay awed by the beauty of the beach and relaxed by the hospitality that’s typically Pinoy. Yet, for anyone who has traveled and seen similar tourist havens in the world, one realizes that we could have done Boracay a lot better than the patchwork we now have.

For starters, government should not have allowed amoeba-like growth of the businesses that are now there. The island’s development should have been given more thought by the national government’s Department of Tourism. The proper infrastructure should have been put in place quickly so as to preserve the very thing that makes the Boracay experience memorable. Up to now, people are asking, where is the master plan? Or maybe, why isn’t there more political will to implement such a plan for the good of the island?

Water, for example, fresh water resources are essential in such a tourism magnet. You do not have to be an expert to realize that all those people, half a million every year, must be consuming more fresh water than the island can naturally provide. Water is now being piped in from the mainland of Aklan since five years ago, but it now seems that the pipes are too small for the fast growth of development on the island. Boracay’s aquifers are shallow, about a meter or two below ground and that leads to the next problem: sanitation.

The locals find it difficult to shift to modern and sanitary ways of dealing with human waste, specially if they have to pay for the service. Most but not all of the commercial establishments have reportedly been finally convinced to connect to a sewerage system that leads to a treatment plant whose capacity is about to be overwhelmed. The local residents are less convinced about the urgency of the problem. Some have septic tanks but with no bottoms, which means they are contaminating ground water.

And there’s flooding in Boracay that’s starting to destroy its image. Flooding triggered by heavy rains in the past caused canals and sewerage pipes to overflow spilling its murky liquid to the white beach, the island’s primary asset and attraction. “The middle part of the island, the White Beach and Bulabog Beach smelled like an open sewer!” a business owner said in an e-mail to an Iloilo based news website, The News Today. Boracay needs proper drainage, another urgent infrastructure that’s not there.

Like any urban area, Boracay now produces a large amount of garbage, some 10 metric tons of it daily. There is an organized effort to collect and segregate garbage. But again, the local residents are less inclined to cooperate. Grants from foreign governments have been made available to study this garbage problem and what to do with it, as the problem is getting larger every day. For an island as small as Boracay, it could drown in its filth.

The other thing Boracay needs is a respectable hospital. It needs a well staffed and equipped hospital that can handle the growing number of tourists who are likely to get injured in a variety of water sports accidents. They must also be able to handle heart attacks and strokes given the number of older tourists who visit. I doubt if the local hospital is equipped with the modern facilities to handle life saving procedures.

And don’t get me started on the airport. It is not an airport terminal, it is a sauna bath… the air conditioning is not working as usual. The terminal building is too small for the large number of flights that now go to Caticlan. The Philippine Tourism Authority should spend a good amount of the travel taxes we pay to build a respectable terminal here, specially because Boracay is the country’s largest tourist draw.

The size of the terminal building may have been alright some years ago when it was just Sea Air and Asian Spirit that used Caticlan. But with Cebu Pacific and PAL Express also competing for the traffic, the situation is simply horrible. There isn’t even a civilized way to retrieve luggage of arriving passengers. The Caticlan terminal is unworthy of a world class destination that Boracay is.

Finally, power availability is spotty. I have personally experienced power outages several times during the past few days. Most of the bigger establishments have generators. But Boracay needs more stable power. It is such a basic requirement for a tourist destination that one wonders if government exists at all or if it does, it certainly does not know what it is doing.

Sayang if Boracay self destructs one of these days. It isn’t as if we have not been warned. Government, national and local, must consider the problems threatening Boracay or risk losing the gem that it is. Officials must have the political will to fix things.

The locals and all those benefiting from Boracay should take to heart the meaning of sustainable development. That is the only way Boracay will continue to be the profitable gem for them and for the country. Or maybe we should move to nearby Carabao Island and do it right this time.

Patio Pacific

In previous visits to Boracay, I had stayed at Fridays and Seawind. This time, I stayed in the boutique hotel of an old friend, Kelly Boncan and her husband Charlie Uy, who heads Boracay’s Chamber of Commerce. I didn’t get a freebie from them so that when I say I found her hotel has the best facilities of the three I had experienced, I am saying it as a satisfied paying guest.

Kelly had been among the first who invested in Boracay some 18 years ago and she has lately upgraded her 90s era Pink Patio into the impressive facilities of Patio Pacific. Her hotel is not at the beachfront, which is a blessing and a disadvantage depending on the guest. I didn’t mind at all being a short walk away from the beach. I appreciated the newly renovated and well maintained rooms. Patio also has a good swimming pool and complete gym. The local government may not know how to rate and regulate hotels but Kelly is maintaining her own high standards.

It helps that Kelly has hired a young German in his early 30s, Sebastian, to keep the hotel running in the high standards Germans are known for. I always see him going around the hotel at all times of the day and night, checking on a lot of details. This keeps hotel staff on their toes and the hotel experience a pleasure for their guests.

Now the only thing Kelly should get is a good chef and better trained front desk staff. She said it is difficult to keep on training staff. The moment they are trained, they leave for abroad. Oh well… that’s something that’s assumed in the local hotel industry. Training staff to become dollar earning OFWs is the contribution of the local hotel industry to society.

Regrets

Here’s something from Dr. Ernie E.

Two gay men, holding hands, are watching a beauty contest pool-side in a cruise ship, when one by one, the beautiful women pass by. They all had string bikini on and no tan lines!

The first gay man turns to his friend, sighs audibly, and in a breathless whisper says, “It’s women like them that sometimes make me wish I were a lesbian!!”

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]