It's also more fun in Bohol!

PANGLAO, Bohol: It’s midweek and our group with Mr. Bobby Joseph, former DoT Region-7 Director Patria Dawnee Roa, Jenny Franco, Pete Dacoycoy, my wife Jessica and I decided to cross over to the Bohol Straits for a one-day trip to the fabulous BlueWater Panglao Resort in Panglao Island, Bohol. This is the beauty of living in Cebu... you are not too far from great vacation hideaways like the BlueWater Resorts, either in Mactan or in Bohol.

It’s been almost a year since I’ve been here when it was inaugurated and it was time for a visit and in just a year, I could see a lot of changes in Bohol. For starters, the trees and the grass at the BlueWater Panglao have started to mature and their food selection was superb. But what ever surprised me was that the government officials of Bohol, led by the energetic Gov. Edgar Chatto continued improving the roads leading to the tourist sites.

Cebu’s political leadership ought to learn a thing or two about making our roads in Cebu not only wide, but cementing them too. Water is the number one enemy of asphalt and I don’t know why our government keeps on asphalting roads that get washed away during the typhoons.

Yesterday morning, we were given a tour of the up and coming The Bellevue Resort, Bohol’s first 5-star resort. This means finally that tourism in Bohol has finally arrived. Although the soft-opening is still slated for August, Bellevue’s GM Franz Eichenauer toured us around and I immediately sent a text message to my brother Sir Arthur Lopez and they have a winner here!

Kudos to the great Anos Fonacier who “discovered” Cebu in the mid-’70s and later Bohol’s tourism potential and put his money where his mouth was by putting up the Cebu and Bohol Beach Club. I really have a soft heart for Filipinos who invest in our own tourism. That is why we supported Sir Dodong Alegrado’s BlueWater in Panglao and now it is the Chan family of The Bellevue Manila who will be opening their Bellevue Resort in Bohol.

Tourism has had a great impact on Cebu and Bohol’s economy. Last Tuesday night we took the Loboc River cruise, which is now open for romantic night cruises where the riverbanks are festooned with colored lights. It may look like Christmas to some, but hey, they are doing it in Bohol and while Metro Manila was drenched in rains... we were having fun in Bohol!

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Still on tourism issues. Last June 19 we wrote that article entitled, “To DFA: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” in response to the report from Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Regional Director Elias Balawag who told the 888 Forum in Marco Polo Plaza that June 30 was the deadline that DFA Undersecretary Rafael E. Seguis apparently issued a directive last May 2 that travel agencies would no longer be allowed to get any accreditation from the DFA in processing passports and other travel documents.

Well June 30 has passed... and what we are getting are press releases from the DFA, which often do not tell the entire story whether or not they have pulled the plug from these small and medium business enterprises that serve the tourism industry. I finally got my own copy of the DFA press release issued last June 21 and things do not augur well for the small and medium entrepreneurs in the tourism industry.

First, the directive sounds great because passport process- ing would now be moved to the shopping malls, which I fully agree is a good move. However, as I warned our readers in our previous column, the reason behind this directive was spelled out clearly by Usec. Seguis who said, “The directive was issued simply to ensure that all passport applicants, regardless of their social status, get to experience the same privileges but at no additional cost to them.” He added, “This is our own way of implementing the No ‘Wang-Wang’ policy of the President.” This is pure “sipsip” from Usec. Seguis!

As we questioned already... “Are they practicing commu- nism in the DFA?” If they wanted to help the poorer people in our society, why then is the DFA asking for P1,200 “expe- dited processing” fee from the P950 regular processing fee? It seems that they are institutionalizing corruption in this new directive. Come now, we’ll we ever see celebrities like Kris Aquino or Dolphy line up to get their passports in the malls? I doubt it because even in communist countries, some are more equal than others.

Like it or not what travel agencies do is a great help to trav- elers even OFWs because they don’t waste their time. If you came from Siquijor to the DFA in Cebu and lacked one or two documents... you’d end up coming back to complete your pa- pers and return back to Cebu. That’s additional cost for OFWs. A travel agency fixes such problems because they won’t allow this to happen before their client goes to the DFA. Alas the DFA wants to get rid of this small and medium scale business. Let’s stop this nonsense!

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