EDITORIAL - Let us promote ourselves

Many people who go to the malls go there to hang out and not buy anything. But the mall owners do not mind. The important thing is to get people into the malls. Once inside, a person is already halfway to becoming a customer.

This should be the same attitude assumed by the national government toward attracting tourists to the Philippines. It does not matter which places they visit or how much they intend to spend. That will come later. The important thing is to bring them in first.

Apparently, however, the new administration of President Aquino does not seem to give much premium toward being aggressive in promoting the country and enticing foreign tourists to come and visit.

In many of the popular cable tv channels like CNN, Discovery and National Geographic, the viewer cannot miss those engaging commercials beckoning viewers to visit such places as Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, and even such smaller nations as the Maldives.

Indeed, not only are other countries being very aggressive in promoting themselves as great tourism destinations, they are also selling themselves as attractive places to invest in. Even such places as Nigeria and Kazakhstan are promoting themselves as good to do business in.

Promoting ourselves does not seem to be the kind of tea in this administration. The best that has come forth so far was a little lip service paid by President Aquino about brighter days ahead and for Filipinos to unite and see the potentials of tourism.

But what is a little lip service, especially if the model does not look attractive. We need to make a spectacular splash of the great things we have, in a way that others can see for themselves, even if only in tv commercials.

And while we are aggressively courting foreign tourists to come to the Philippines, let us stop the folly of quarreling with other countries who try to warn us of terror threats. The reality of terror is something we have to accept and guard against.

So, instead of trying to get into a state of denial, let us do everything to make sure that tourism and foreign investments go hand in hand with security. Without security assurance, nobody will come, leaving us with nothing to do but go on foreign begging missions.