Getting visitors to come

According to a press release from the Tourism Promotions Board, we won eight awards in this year’s World Travel Awards. We were supposed to have been declared Asia’s leading beach destination, leading dive destination, leading island destination, Boracay as Asia’s leading luxury island destination, Intramuros as Asia’s leading tourist attraction, Cebu as Asia’s leading wedding destination, Asia’s leading marketing campaign (Love the Philippines) and the Tourism Secretary as a transformational leader in tourism.

Wow! That’s a lot of awards. I want to be impressed but I am not. I have been in the marketing industry for a big part of my career and I wonder how much those awards cost. One has to pay to be considered, buy exhibition space during the awards night and pay for a table or two for co-workers to cheer us on. These aren’t like the Nobel Prize or the Magsaysay Awards where the awardee doesn’t have to do anything to be considered and eventually chosen for an award. You just have to be outstanding.

What are the metrics of the awards? Boracay as Asia’s luxury island destination is a laugh. I was just there and it has seen better days. From the time you enter the island in that shabby transport center to the hawkers on the white beach, luxury is not a word that comes to mind but Third World.

Intramuros has seen remarkable improvement, I concede, but it can’t be Asia’s leading tourist attraction or we would be seeing a lot of foreign tourists there by now. Cebu may be attracting wedding parties like the one I witnessed at Plantation Bay over the weekend. But as one inbound tour operator puts it, it is a niche market to be developed.

I would be more impressed with the performance of the DOT and the tourism secretary if they delivered solid numbers in terms of visitors and hotel room occupancy rates. According to Leechiu, the property consultants, the hotel room occupancy rate in Cebu is 54 percent, still way below the 80 percent rate, pre-COVID-19. Revenue per available room is P2,763, which means the Cebuanos who depend on the hotel industry are still struggling. Yet, the tourism secretary is Cebuana and should have made a big difference.

I saw some figures indicating that outbound tourism, Filipinos who tour other countries, have increased and are more than inbound tourism or visitors to the country. If the tourism secretary can’t sell hotel rooms to domestic tourists, we can’t expect her to sell to foreign visitors. And yet, selling those hotel rooms and the restaurant business that comes with it is the only honest way we can measure the effectiveness of the tourism department.

Right now, it is all ego-tripping and there is little to show that benefits the tourism industry and the economy in peso and centavo terms.

In my years of reporting on the industry, I am convinced that the real foot soldiers of the industry are the inbound tour operators or Destination Management Companies who work hard in key tourism markets to convince foreign wholesalers to send their clients to the Philippines.

Take Dading Clemente, who is the oldest and most experienced tourism professional in the country. She is, at 86-years old, still traveling internationally alone as she actively sells the Philippines to visitors.

Her Rajah Tours brought in about 2,000 visitors last year through tour programs in the US and Canada which Dading personally escorts. The tourism attaches helped a lot but their budgets were cut.

Rajah’s VIP Tour program is held every July and it’s now on its 15th year. It is participated by Fil-Ams/Balikbayans and American tourists from the US with an average number of 300 to 500. Land package with airfare from the West and East coast is $5,000 per person, a joint program with Philippine Airlines and the Philippine Embassies and Consulates. Average number of days of a Tour Program is 10 days.

Their Winter Escapade is a program for Fil-Canadians and Canadian tourists. It’s scheduled every February, also a 10-day Program with average participants of 300 to 500. The projects are not part of the program of DOT/TPB and hence, have no promo budget. The LGUs they visit extend support by hosting dinners with cultural entertainment. These are projects where the results are visible.

Last week, my Singapore-based son and his family used a weeklong holiday in the school calendar to come to Mactan. They were very pleased by the Mactan airport experience. My grandchildren were totally pleased with Plantation Bay that they were talking about coming back soon.

My son, who is with the business side of CNBC, was saying that the Philippines is underrepresented in Singapore as a place to visit. The GM of Plantation Bay said they just came back from Singapore precisely to get more Singaporeans to visit, taking advantage of direct flights. Most of their visitors now are Koreans, thanks to a very effective general sales agent in Seoul.

But we have problems like higher room rates than regional competitors. Jojo Clemente, the workhorse of Rajah Tours who is forever selling the country abroad, told me that Boracay and Cebu are hurting. Boracay’s LGU made things more difficult by tacking on more fees to get to the island and the resorts are not willing to adjust rates. As for Cebu, it has become stale.

Well, visitors can spend a week relaxing at Plantation Bay and not even think of going to the city, like I did. No visitors really want to brave Cebu City’s EDSA-like traffic to see Magellan’s cross or the Temple of Leah.

The Cebuana tourism secretary must crack her brains more to make Cebu interesting to visitors. If she can’t do that for Cebu, we can’t expect her to do that for the country.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco.