Choose Philippines out to bring global mart to ITF

MANILA, Philippines - The online tourism portal of national television network ABS-CBN is practically bringing its captive global market to the forthcoming International Travel Festival (ITF) at the SMX Convention Center Metro Manila, where it will showcase the country’s choice destinations and open up its doors to the event’s local and foreign visitors.

ChoosePhilippines.com will have its own booth at the ITF to provide guests with a virtual tour of the archipelago and enable them to make sound choices of places to visit, determine the fun activities to enjoy, and obtain many other helpful information.

The global traffic of Choose Philippines, according to ABS-CBN Regional Network Group head Nannah Tobias, spans four continents and five regions covering some 20 countries.

“So we are practically bringing our global viewership to the ITF and vice-versa,” Tobias says of how Choose Philippines promotes the country to the world.

The portal attracts 300,000 page views monthly, and serves some 50,000 registered site members and an 800,000 Facebook community in such countries as the Philippines, United States, Canada, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Australia, Singapore, United Kingdom, Japan, Hong Kong, Qatar, Germany, Kuwait, Italy, Malaysia, Taiwan, India, Korea, Thailand, and the Netherlands.

The portal’s participation in the ITF is expected to boost the event’s global exposure during its two-day run from Dec. 10 to 11, when both migrant Filipinos and foreign tourists start flocking to the Philippines to enjoy the world’s longest and merriest Christmas season.

Leading the foreign-based global exhibitors in the ITF are worldwide service provider Amadeus and the British, Turkish and European chambers of commerce.

Joining them are a similarly increasing number of local tourism players led by the various regional offices of the Department of Tourism nationwide and its attached agency, the Tourism Infrastructure Enterprise Zone Authority.

The local exhibitors include tourism destinations across the country — from Cagayan Valley in the north to Palawan in the west, all the way to General Santos City in the south, thus turning the ITF into a gathering of a huge cosmopolitan tourism community.

The ITF 2013 now covers not only what used to be a solely inbound promotional event dubbed “Travel Philippines Show,” but also outbound travel named “Euro-AmeriAsian Travel, Trade and Cultural Expo.”

Practically promoting a two-way tourism traffic, the ITF is seen to contribute substantially to the continued rise in global tourism, now reportedly worth an estimated $1.15 trillion from a yearly revenue hike of 1.5 percent over the past five years.

Tourism’s total contribution to the global economy in 2011 alone was placed at $6.3 trillion and 255 million jobs.

Also expected to participate in the ITF are transfer and transport firms, cruise ships and domestic passenger vessels, telecommunication companies, destination owners and managers, banks and financial institutions, and the academe and various service providers, among many others.

For more information on the ITF, contact Exlink Events at 632 643-3887, 0920-9242532 or 0920-9814376, e-mail at info@exlinkevents.com or visit www.exlinkevents.com.