‘Business as usual in Boracay’

Worried by tourist misconceptions over the ongoing land dispute, resort owners on the world-famous Boracay island in Aklan clarified it’s "business as usual" at the world-famous island.

"We in the island are very much worried about this incorrect perception. We assure everyone that everything is normal here," said Nenette Aguirre-Graf, president of Boracay Foundation Inc. (BFI).

Graf, who represents most of the resort owners along with BFI chairman Orlando Sacay, issued the statement after some local and foreign tourists made queries about newspaper reports regarding the "forest and agricultural" land reclassification of the island.

"Apparently they (tourists) have the wrong impression from media reports that there is turmoil in the island," she lamented.

Graf, who owns The Boracay Beach Resort, complained that President Arroyo’s Proclamation 1064 has adversely affected business in the resort.

"We should be attracting and enticing tourists to come here rather than scare them away," she stressed.

Graf earlier questioned the government’s timing in taking over the land now that it has become a multi-billion-peso industry, conservatively placed at P7 billion a year.

"Now should be the time for us to show that our country can offer the best and safe destination in this part of the world because of what’s happening in other destinations in the region," she added.

Like the rest of local and foreign investors who had invested so much and helped the island paradise to what it is now "acclaimed as one of the world’s best," Graf argued that they should be given land titles because they occupied and developed it for the last 30 years.