San Remigio eyed as the next diving haven

Boasting of having Cebu’s longest shoreline, the municipality of San Remigio is being eyed by a resort operator to become the next top diving destination in the North.

Just recently, San Remigio Beach Club opened its Marine Dive Center which aims to cater to the foreseen demand of scuba diving in the area.

Its young resort general manager Mark Anthony Ynoc pointed out their confidence in San Remigio because it has several unique things to offer to the increasing number of domestic and international tourists coming in Cebu.

With the opening of their Marine Dive Center, Ynoc is optimistic to be able to capture a huge number of foreign divers who usually explore different dive sites in the world.

“The usual mindset of local tourists is that San Remigio is far so why not dive in Mactan instead so we target foreigners. But compared to Cebu, we have better dive sites here because we protect it and like other popular islands in the North like Bantayan and Malapascua, we also have varieties of marine creatures such as thresher sharks and whale sharks,” he noted.

He said that aside from its 14 kilometers of shoreline, San Remigio has eight marine sanctuaries that measures around 25 to 30 kilometers which not a lot of people knows about.

Its underwater terrain also holds six caves and a four-kilometer reef that has a wall with a 40 to 60 meter drop.

Marine dive center manager Saar Kara said that the unique things about San Remigio is that people can experience totally new things and new environment and divers can see variety of aquatic creatures and corals in big densities in such as calm and relaxing atmosphere.

San Remigio Beach Club offers no diving fee to its visitors and they have scuba packages for beginners.

The dive center offers courses such as basic open water course for P12, 900 which could be fitted to the schedule of anyone who wants to take it. They also have the discover scuba diving course which is an introduction to scuba diving for P3, 000.

“Extra fees such as dive fees, camera fees, boat fees are usually the big problems for tourists from abroad because it costs them a lot so in our case we don’t charge them these extra fees because we want people to see and experience the beauty of San Remigio without hassles so many will come and visit us,” said Kara.

As a sports and leisure resort, San Remigio Beach Club also offers other adventure activities such as mountain trekking, horse back riding and among others aside from marine sports and activities.

Currently, the resort has 50 rooms and operates with a 40 percent monthly average occupancy rate.

Since they have gone aggressive on their marketing initiatives, generating exposures from both local and international scene, the resort has been able to increase around 25 percent in sales year on year from last year, said Ynoc.

Right now aside from marketing their diving activities, they are also focusing on tapping into the MICE market (meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibits) especially the corporate team building activities which has generated 40 percent share from their client-base.

Ynoc said that they are currently tapping Korean schools for their winter and summer camps which lasts around six to eight weeks.

Aside from Koreans, they are also looking at increasing their number of Japanese and European guests so they are pushing their club membership.

“So far our efforts have slowly peaked up but even if we work hard it will always be the travel agencies who will dictate the best destinations for tourists and in that case we compete with the whole Philippines not only local so we try our best in attracting them to come over and enjoy San Remigio,” Ynoc stressed.—Rhia de Pablo