How to make the Philippines No. 1 in ASEAN tourism

Traveling makes a man wiser. —Thomas Jefferson

Congratulations to “Juice King” Alfredo Yao of Zest-O juice, Zest Air and Philippine Business Bank. Last week he reportedly paid nearly half a billion pesos to buy the beautiful four-hectare property of Panoly Resort Hotel Boracay. The resort was formerly known as Club Panoly, run since 1989 by a pioneer Singaporean investor who was evicted a few years ago by the landlord in a controversial case the former told me was “unjust.”

After Zest-O and Zest Air, Is Zest Resorts Next?

Our sources among the resort owners of Boracay told me that Panoly Resort now only has 60 rooms and that Fred Yao reportedly plans to build 280 rooms next year to compete with Discovery Shores, Shangri-La Boracay, Mandarin Resort Boracay, Astoria Boracay Resort, Regency Hotel, and the huge Crown Regency Resort and Convention Center, among others.

Years ago after “Plastics King” William Tiu Gatchalian bought a couple of hotels, I bumped into him at the Okura Hotel in Tokyo, Japan, during then President Joseph Estrada’s official visit. I suggested to him that he create a hotel chain with his own distinctive brand name, to be perhaps the Philippine version of Malaysia’s Shangri-La, Hong Kong’s Peninsula, the French-run Sofitel, or Westin, Hyatt, etc. He offered for me to be the president of this proposed hotel chain right then and there, but I declined and told him I’d prefer to run my own small real estate and lending businesses. His Waterfront hotel chain now seems to be doing well.

Build A Philippine Brand Like Shangri-La, Peninsula or Mandarin Oriental

Two locally owned hotels I recently stayed at on two separate weekends and which impressed me very much as examples of excellent homegrown Philippine resorts are the Bluewater Resort Bohol and the Asia Grand View Hotel in Coron, Palawan. I hope the Tourism Department, provincial and other governments as well as banks support the growth of small- and medium-sized hotel owners like these due to their excellence, and not just the big companies.

Bluewater Resort is said to be owned by a Boholano entrepreneur who was in the furniture export business in Cebu and started a small Cebu hotel as a hobby, but I heard from a staff member that when the Cebu furniture exporters lost out to our Asian competitors due to high electricity costs (Asia’s highest!) and other challenges, this entrepreneur’s family shifted to tourism. I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t a Western resort chain due to its high standards.

The 13-room Asia Grand View Hotel in Coron is excellent but too small in number of rooms to be a real business, so I urge the owners to expand due to their great location overlooking the sea and excellent standards. I heard the owners are a Filipina married to a retired Siemens executive from Germany, and they personally supervised construction and operations in meticulous detail. My unsolicited advice: Expand your establishment, build more rooms on your fantastic piece of real estate and make your brand famous!

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One of the best ways to make the Philippine economy prosper and become more self-sufficient and progressive is to reform and support the tourism industry. I read on Twitter that new Tourism Secretary Mon Jimenez is saying that we can promote better Philippine tourism via buzz; I heard he’s a very talented advertising industry leader but I hope more comprehensive reforms and modernization of the country’s tourism sector will attract travelers in a sustainable way. Here are a few basic suggestions:

1. Improve all airports. Thank goodness the shocking criticisms of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport as being “the worst in the world” and CNN’s fifth “most hated in the world” have finally compelled our national government officials to act. Throwing money at a problem like a woeful airport is not the solution, it is only the first step. How can we ensure better and more orderly management? What about retraining the Immigration, Customs and other personnel to treat all tourists — including overseas Filipino workers and balikbayans — better, instead of mulcting or intimidating them?

2. Promote a culture of tourism. I would like to refer to this as promoting “a national conspiracy to make tourists delighted about the Philippines.” From the taxi drivers who should be retrained not to overcharge tourists and speak better English to airport Immigration or Customs officials, all of us in Philippine society should be reeducated and brainwashed to think of every tourist as someone we should care for so that he or she can spread good word of mouth about the Philippines being a wonderful place.

3. Better peace and order. One of the best ways to ensure a continuous inflow of tourists is to guarantee their personal safety with better overall peace and order, so that even our strategic allies like the USA, Japan, Europe and Australia won’t have travel advisories discouraging their citizens from vacationing here.

4. Create Tourist Police. When I went to Egypt for two weeks in 2008 on a Cosmos tour (which had a good, reasonable price but the Egyptian tour guide was horrible in bringing our group of mostly Westerners to useless and overpriced souvenir shops so he could earn commissions), everywhere I went all the tourist destinations and major city centers had special “Tourist Police” outposts and roaming tourist police.

On Nov. 16, after I hosted a dinner for Georgetown University PhD student Josh Kueh and Xiamen University researcher Xu Lu, then brought them respectively to Manila Bay Hostel and Miramar Hostel, I chanced upon a taxi driver near midnight having problems with a Swiss tourist named Philip Stadermann, who was apparently victimized by the Ativan gang and couldn’t wake up.

Worried for the personal safety of the Swiss tourist, I helped the hapless taxi driver bring him to Manila Doctors Hospital’s emergency room on United Nations Avenue, but the medical staff there wanted the taxi driver or me to pay for the bills or else they wouldn’t receive him. After wrangling for a while and making sure the doctors ascertained that the tourist was not dying, I suggested to the confused taxi driver that we bring him to the nearest police station on UN Avenue.

What followed was like a comedy of errors. A portly police officer (what happened to Senator Lacson’s good policy of no big stomachs?) at the entrance said they couldn’t do anything to help and suggested that I bring the victimized tourist home. When I said that was impossible and that I was just being a Good Samaritan, wondering why the police couldn’t help, this portly officer then suggested that perhaps it was best we bring the victimized tourist to the Tourism Department. At midnight? I became very angry.

Only after I got angry and explained to him that the work of policemen is supposed to assist crime victims (based on movies or TV crime shows I’ve watched) did another police officer nearby named Mark start to list down the details of the Swiss victim from the taxi driver.  

It was midnight but soon, I saw TV news cameras and some print media reporters coming to interview the taxi driver. I left after the efficient policeman named Mark promised that the taxi driver would be paid by the Swiss tourist a reasonable amount for all the trouble, but that there should be no overcharging and that the tourist be allowed to doze off inside the taxi while parked in their police compound.

Let us promote better peace and order not only for more tourists, but for all of us as well!

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