Upbeat stats keep tourism players' hopes up

CEBU, Philippines - Although the global economic crunch has affected the influx of tourist arrivals in the country, players from Cebu’s tourism industry continue to be optimistic as the province continues to reap positive statistics amidst the negative prospects of the economy.

Tourism undersecretary Phineas Alburo said in an interview that generally, players from our tourism industry continue to be “cautiously optimistic” because they continue to believe that amidst the economic crunch, people will still travel for either pleasure or business.

Although he stressed that at this point, considerations on value in terms of what you get and what you pay for is given much emphasis noting the shrinking disposable income of the travel market.

Alburo agreed that the tourism arrivals indeed went down because of the global economic crisis but there is still growth although this is smaller compared to previous figures.

However, he stressed that this has not hindered the players to be more aggressive in targeting new markets as well as getting back traditional prolific markets like Europe, United States and Japan.

“Now bigger markets have been hit so we see these people less travelling. However, in our end, we continue to promote Philippine tourism regardless of the economic situation because we continue to believe that there is a good side for every crisis and at this one, people can now travel at lesser expense because of special offers that are affordable,” said Alburo.

He also stressed that at this point, the industry should strive harder to promote tourism and maintain the image of the Philippines as a tourism destination and he also called for them to take in all the challenges as a normal phase so they can do business as usual amidst the negative backdrop of the world economy.

Meanwhile, in an interview with Shangri- La’s Mactan Resort and Spa director for sales and marketing Michael Jaey C. Albaña, he shared that aside from the global economic crunch which started late last year, Cebu’s tourism stakeholders were affected with the issue on AH1N1 flu virus.

He said that because of this issue, a lot of players suffered from low occupancies and on the leisure side of the business, there has been noted decline of traditional markets like Korea.

He said that for their part, they experienced an eight to 10 percent drop of their occupancy for the first quarter of this year but they hope to recover by the end of the third quarter.

Albaña said that with the global crisis, the business sector has started to cut down on their meetings and incentives and several of their foreign corporate clients have either cancelled or postponed their reservations for the first two quarters of this year awaiting the brighter developments on the economy.

However he stressed that they have looked at this as a temporary set back and they continue to step up and promote more aggressively and in fact they have come up with special packages fit for enticing regional markets in Asia to travel considering the short distance because long haul travels could be hard to sustain at this point.

He also said that at these times of crisis, the domestic market has been helping them stay afloat because more and more local tourists are taking advantage of the low fare and tour rates offered by travel agents, hotels, resorts and airline companies.

Albaña said that their continued optimism could be attributed to some factors and one of which is that there were still no confirmed deaths on the AH1N1 flu virus in Cebu and the province continue to be a preferred destination in Asia so confidence in our tourism industry remains. —Rhia de Pablo