Beyond slogans

A year and a half into the Aquino administration, our tourism marketing program still can’t move beyond slogans and logos.

Ramon Jimenez is saddled with high expectations, having taken over as tourism chief amid reports that President Aquino was unhappy with Alberto Lim. Bertie was said to be too low-key for a job that needs the salesman’s skills of Dick Gordon and Fidel Ramos combined. So a marketing expert was brought in.

Now the new slogan, like the previous one, is again being flayed for lack of originality. I guess in the Internet age, it’s relatively easy to find that ’50s vintage Swiss tourism slogan with the same line – It’s more fun in Switzerland! – and upload it for all to see.

Yesterday Jimenez had to clarify that not a cent had been paid so far for the slogan, logo or marketing campaign because there is still no final “comprehensive sketch.”

Jimenez should speed it up and launch it ASAP, because we are being left behind by our neighbors in this department. It’s a shame because we have many world-class natural attractions and we do have a unique culture that can be developed into a Philippine brand.

Maybe every marketing program needs a good slogan and logo. But the Swiss – and people from several other popular travel destinations – will surely agree that the catchiest slogan is useless if the product is lousy.

We can have a generic slogan: Visit the Philippines Year. I know several countries that have used it for their tourism campaigns. Or, as some people underwhelmed with the new slogan have pointed out, we could have simply stuck with “Wow! Philippines.” What does it matter if Dick Gordon gets the credit? All he’ll brag about is that he came up with the idea at no cost to taxpayers.

But the product will still be the biggest consideration. Many countries that are major tourist destinations don’t have any remarkable tourism slogan, although some cities have their catchy individual descriptions: the City of Light for Paris, for example, or the city that never sleeps and The Big Apple for New York.

Jimenez has a pretty good product to sell, so his marketing campaign shouldn’t be dragged down by bickering over slogans and logos.

OK, maybe I love my own too much, but having traveled extensively, I truly believe our country has many unique and memorable attractions to offer. Our beaches are better than several heavily hyped destinations in the region. We have the most extensive terraced rice paddies in the world. Our potential has been barely tapped for sports tourism, medical tourism, and why not, even culinary and folk medicine tourism. When I’m abroad I tell foreigners that they can go volcano-hopping in Luzon; how many countries can offer that experience?

And Jimenez is correct in his emphasis on the Pinoy attitude: cheerful, friendly, quick to laugh. You realize how unique it is when you travel abroad and repeatedly encounter aloof, dour or rude foreigners in the service industries. Even if tender loving care should be part of their job description, it simply isn’t in their DNA. Even smiling seems to require special effort on their part.

On the other hand, the Pinoy’s natural TLC has made our nurses in demand around the world. It has also been cited by business process outsourcing firms as one of the reasons, apart from our English proficiency, in setting up operations here.

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We do need to work on problems afflicting the product. Many of the problems, as Bertie Lim pointed out during his Cabinet stint (possibly to the annoyance of P-Noy), are beyond the direct control of the Department of Tourism (DOT), including inadequate tourism infrastructure. Then there’s the lack of direct flights between Manila and many cities in major non-Asian tourism markets – a problem that our neighbors particularly Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand do not have. The last direct flight to Europe – between Manila and Amsterdam – ends this April, thanks to the common carriers tax and new fees slapped starting last November on airline companies flying long-haul from Manila. This is beyond the control of the tourism secretary.

Several diplomats have told me that a top concern of their citizens when considering a visit to the Philippines is personal safety including reports of extortion by government authorities.

Yesterday, with the tourism slogan seeming to be off to an inauspicious start, the task just got rockier for Jimenez after no less than the President and commander-in-chief himself disclosed a terrorist threat to bomb the Black Nazarene procession today.

Since P-Noy used the word “terrorist” and said the plotters’ links to foreign groups were being verified, the assumption is that it’s Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian terror cell loosely linked to al-Qaeda and allied with both the Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Even if nothing untoward happens at the procession today, the warning adds to the travel advisories issued by several countries on the Philippines amid the kidnapping of an Australian in Mindanao and the apparent murder of a young Swiss visitor last year.

Bertie Lim’s DOT stint was snagged from the start by the hostage crisis in Rizal Park in August last year, staged by a dismissed cop. The response by the Manila Police District’s once vaunted SWAT team has become a model worldwide on how not to conduct a hostage rescue.

With P-Noy himself promising that the government would be on top of the situation today, I don’t know how Manila traffic cops would carry out their duty. On days when the Philippine National Police is supposed to be on red alert, such as on New Year’s Day, Manila traffic cops also want to party with the rest of the world. As the Manila traffic cop chief admitted, nearly 200 of his personnel took the day off when over a million people descended on Rizal Park to celebrate New Year 2012. The chief then blamed the hordes of people for their lack of discipline and for tying up traffic.

If Manila cops can’t mount a successful hostage rescue, or even maintain their grip on a sledgehammer, we shouldn’t expect them to be able to direct traffic. So let’s just pray that someone else will be watching over today’s procession and no one will be hurt.

Again, these matters are beyond the control of the DOT secretary. It must be emphasized that criminality and terrorist threats have not deterred travelers from visiting New York or London, for example, and tourists have returned to Indonesia’s popular Bali island.

Those places have their uniquely irresistible attractions, but then so does our archipelago. Our destinations could use better marketing. The DOT should get cracking now.