BORACAY, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte will meet the Boracay Inter-Agency Task Force (BIATF) and tourism stakeholders on the country's top tourist destination on Thursday.
Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat said among the chief executive’s agenda is "to discuss ongoing and future steps to sustain and protect the gains during the island’s rehabilitation."
Related Stories
This will be the first time Duterte is visiting the island after more than a year since it reopened in October 2018.
Duterte ordered the six-month closure of the country’s top tourist destination in April 2018 to pave way for its restoration.
The BIATF, led by the Department of Natural and Resources and co-chaired by the DOT and the Department of the Interior and Local Government, facilitated the ongoing rehabilitation.
According to DOT, Duterte will also meet the tourism stakeholders of the island including airlines, hotels/resorts and tour operators. Puyat said it's the president's way of promoting domestic tourism.
These stakeholders earlier offered special rates on tour packages, room rates and marked-down rates for domestic flights to cushion the economic impact of COVID-19 outbreak.
COVID-19 travel ban affected foreign tourist arrivals
Howard Lance
Uyking, Tourism assistant secretary for Branding and Marketing Communications, earlier said that the 2020 foreign tourist arrivals target has already
been affected by the temporary travel ban on China, Macau, Hong Kong—and briefly on Taiwan—
due to the rise in coronavirus cases.
The tourism agency disclosed that international tourist arrivals decreased by 41.4% in February with only 418,126 foreign arrivals last month compared to 713,394 in the same period last year.
According to Pacific Asia Travel Association chair Roberto “Bob” Zozobrado, Boracay is among the destinations badly hit by the COVID-19 scare.
Zozobrado said that hotel occupancy went down and some tour operators have been receiving cancellations amid the outbreak.
“Boracay specially suffered a lot during Chinese New Year. All those Chinese that go there every New Year nawala… All our hotel members ng Boracay pleading for help,” he said in a recent chance interview.
Last week, Puyat announced that the DOT earmarked P6 billion to boost domestic tourism and mitigate the economic impact of COVID-19.
Of which, the DOT said at least P85 million will be spent on the training on COVID-19 orientation, preparedness, response and protocols for industry stakeholders.
In view of this, the DOT said its manpower development will "tweak its Filipino Brand of Service module to include points on how to handle guests for COVID-19 and response.”