Through the CCCI Tourism Committee, now headed by Mila Espina, establishing a tourism business support organization or a "Tourism Coalition" will be one of the important resolutions to be formulated in the upcoming Tourism Congress set on June 22, 2006.
Although it is difficult to group together the stakeholders in one organization, one of the problems encountered by the previous attempts, she said she is confident that this time around, the idea is [already] doable.
During a Tourism Congress preparatory meeting, attended by over 50 prime movers in the tourism sector in Cebu, Espina sensed more active players now, and creating a one-body organization, initially through the CCCI Tourism Committee, is easier to formulate now.
Espina stressed that this braver move still needs a board resolution from the CCCI, immediately after the board approves the resolution an umbrella organization of the tourism sector might be installed, or a creation of a Tourism Business Support Organization (BSO).
Based on the attendees of the recent CCCI Tourism Committee meeting, Espina said almost every sub-sector of the tourism industry was represented including the smaller players like the Pension House Operators Association of Cebu, among others.
"The CCCI Tourism Committee is only an advocacy body. The Department of Tourism still on top of this, including the local government units involved like the Cebu City and Cebu Provincial governments, and the component cities, and municipalities," Espina said.
According to Espina, it is now high time for the tourism stakeholders to unite and work as one in promoting Cebu to push tourism growth.
It is very important to have an umbrella organization of the sector, so that support from both local and international groups, especially those offering monetary grants, technical help can be properly taken advantage of by the sector.
The Canadian government alone expressed its willingness to help the smaller players in the tourism sector, provided that there will be an official BSO that the Canadian government can work with.
However, the small and micro entrepreneurs engaged in tourism related businesses, must group together and form a support organization, or be affiliated with big business organization group, in order to get "wealth" support from Canadian government, said Canadian Ambassador to the Philippines Peter Sutherland.
"We are more interested to work with small scale business especially in the tourism sector in Cebu," Sutherland said.