Being known globally for its rich underwater dive sites, the town of Moalboal is being viewed by its tourism industry stakeholder as a haven for the huge scuba diving market however one resort owner stressed the importance of preserving its rich coral reefs.
The town of Moalboal is a 4th class municipality in the province and extends as a peninsula in the Southwestern tip of Cebu, bordered to the west by the Tañon Strait and nestled between the towns of Alcantara and Badian.
In an interview with Swedish Michael O. J. Pettersson, owner and general manager of Moalboal-based Kasai Village Beach Resort, he said that divers are a huge market segment and it fuels the rapid growth of Cebu’s tourism industry.
He said that around 50 percent of foreign market that visits the Philippines are composed of divers and these client segment stay in the country for a longer period of time than other transient tourists.
In his resort alone, he said that 85 percent of their client-base is composed of divers and then 90 percent of which are foreigners mostly coming from Europe and the United States.
Pettersson said that the diving industry is the prime mover of Moalboal’s tourism growth and without its rich marine diversity; both foreign and local tourists will not be frequenting their area.
So he stressed the need to educate major tourism stakeholders of the importance of preserving our underwater natural resources.
“Divers are a big market for us in Moalboal but the only reason that these people go here is because of our dive sites’ rich aquatic life so protection and preservation of these resources is very important for every diving business because it is what we sell,” said Pettersson.
He added that without their place’s beautiful reefs, no tourist would want to come over; but he agreed though that it would actually take long period of time for locals to understand and learn to protect these natural resources.
Since the 1970s, Moalboal has already developed a tourism industry based on diving and beaches alone. The municipality had the only two white sand beaches on the western shore of Cebu Island, the Panagsama Beach, where most resorts in the town were established and the White beach at Barangay Saavedra, which used to be a quieter beach that locals frequent and has been recently developed.
Since Moalboal is a peninsula it is a town almost entirely surrounded by water so majority of the people who live in the flat lands engage in fishing as their main mode of livelihood while for those who live in the mountain regions, like Agbalanga and Bala, live through farming. – Rhia de Pablo