Travel exec urges support for Tourism Act of 2009

MANILA, Philippines – Tourism, already the second biggest money maker and job provider in the country, is likely to emerge as the principal industry soon, directly benefiting millions of Filipinos all over, according to a prominent businessman.

“Tourism is jobs and business and stronger tourism means more jobs and more business,” according to Robert Lim Joseph, chairman emeritus of the National Association of Independent Travel Agencies Inc. (Naitas).

He stressed this as he asked all tourism stakeholders to support the recently enacted Tourism Act of 2009, which he said will make the industry the principal engine of growth and development of the country.

Joseph, also consul general of Latvia, cited Spain where tourism is the No. 1 industry and where millions in the cities and in the countryside benefit as tourist workers or as entrepreneurs catering to tourists.

Here in the Philippines, in the first quarter of this year alone, new hotels and resorts, costing P87.16 billion, have already provided employment to 1,286 employees, Joseph said.

By the end of this year, he said, at least 1,946 more people will be directly employed nationwide once the additional 2,315 hotel rooms are operational in Manila, Cebu, Boracay, Puerto Princesa, Tagaytay, and Albay.

Joseph said more jobs are forthcoming because the Department of Tourism has recently endorsed five development projects worth P6.32 billion which will provide 6,340 new jobs in places where the hotels and resorts will rise.

He said thousands more who are not directly connected with tourism will derive income from it like the carpenters who build hotels and resorts and farmers and fishermen who supply food to bars and restaurants.

“Everyone is actually a stakeholder, including tricycle drivers in towns and provinces who ferry tourists to local destinations or the cigarette vendors who sell outside bars and restaurants,” Joseph said.

He said expectations are high that Philippine tourism will get stronger despite the downturn in world travel business because of the new law that provides fiscal incentives to new investments in tourism projects and a master plan for tourism that will develop new tourist spots and new travel destinations.

Joseph said the tourism law will open new facets, like the development of community tourism where customs and rituals of a locality, like planting or harvest festivals, become tourist attractions.

That is why Naitas has started a program since 2001 for a culture of tourism all over the country so that everyone realizes the value of tourism in daily life and all help to insure the success of the industry, he said.