There is indeed more fun in Phl

In the exchange of harsh words among our feuding Senators — and it’s getting heated as the days go by — the quarrel sadly is over uneven distribution of funds under the maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) in their annual budget. It’s almost tempting to say the problem seems to be, there are more funds in the Philippines!

Facetiously, it is just a takeoff from “It’s more fun in the Philippines” slogan made popular by our Department of Tourism (DOT) Secretary Ramon Jimenez.

Through this campaign, the DOT secretary has apparently succeeded in making our country known in the global travel market as a fun destination for tourists. This can be gleaned from the fact that a total of 4,272,811 foreign tourists arrived in the Philippines last year. This was a 9.07-percent increase from the 3,917,454 visitors recorded in 2011. It was also the first time the country surpassed the four-million visitor arrival mark.

“We know that Filipinos are the biggest believers of our slogan, ‘It’s more fun in the Philippines,’” Jimenez said. In the same press statement he issued yesterday, Jimenez admitted it would become increasingly challenging for the DOT to meet future targets, which for this year is 5.5-million visitor arrivals.

According to the DOT monitoring, 1,031,155 visitors from South Korea arrived in the country last year. They made up 24.13 percent of the total visitor volume. This also set a new all-time record last year, as it registered an 11.45-percent growth from 2011.

The United States came in second, with 625,626 visitors, or 15.27 percent of the total visitor volume. Japan ranked third with 412,474 visitors, or 9.65 percent of the total arrivals last year.

The Philippines could learn from the experience of Spain in the tourism department. Last year alone, Spain posted a record of 58 million visitors. This has made Spain the second most visited country in the world.

Thanks to its very heavy tourist traffic with its multiplier impact on its economy, Spain has been able to weather the severe financial turmoil it has been going through in the past two years.

In terms of tourism, Spanish Ambassador Jorge Domecq noted that the Philippines has also been making great strides in its own efforts to turn around the industry into a major source of the country’s economic growth.

But making the sun and beaches our country’s selling point, Domecq pointed out, is not enough to make tourists come back and make the Philippines a major tourism destination.

“If you want the Philippines to become a major tourist destination, not just meaning that people come but don’t come back, making them want to return because they feel at home, you need to diversify and make sure that the cultural aspect is there. It is what people will love and make them want to come and come back to the Philippines,” Domecq said.

I could not agree more with the Spanish ambassador. Our government must make an active effort to invest in the cultural aspect by restoring what Filipinos already have in the country. We have tourist attractions like our historic walls around Intramuros in Manila and the Spanish-era houses in Vigan, Ilocos Norte, among other landmarks.

Domecq even went so far as to say that they are willing to help local governments who have sent letters seeking their expertise in terms of restoration and verification of historical information. Among these cities, I gathered, is Naga whose mayor has initiated the restoration of a portion of the city to what it was once like during the Spanish era.

Despite hobbled by domestic economic problems, Domecq noted that the Philippines is the only country in Asia that continues to benefit from official development aid (ODA) from Spain. Although their government has implemented severe budget cuts, Domecq said the Spanish leadership has not set aside the Philippines in terms of support.

“Now with austerity programs and budgetary restrictions, the money we had for development aid has been cut back severely and we have had to set priorities but we do not think that the relationship (between our two countries) is just in words,” Domecq pointed out.

Domecq said even though the relationship between the Philippines and Spain remains below the publicity radar, the two countries have been cooperating in many aspects throughout these years. “The people in Spain… have taken that position (that) the only country in the entire Asian continent, the Philippines will remain on the map of our ODA which has been quite considerable,” he stressed.

The Spanish ambassador underscored this during a tete-a-tete with a group of Filipino newsmen in a media briefing for the upcoming Tribuna España Filipinas, a high-level dialogue to be held on Jan. 29-30 between Filipino and Spanish delegates specializing in the fields of cultural tourism, business, education, and good governance.

Domecq remains hopeful that the Tribuna España Filipinas will continue to serve as a venue for great minds to think up of more avenues for collaboration for the benefit of the two countries. Previous Tribunas have given birth to most of the agreements reached between the two countries after all.

And the good news does not end there. According to Domecq, many partnerships have also been forged between the Philippines and Spain, especially on teaching the Spanish language in our schools.

Toward this end, Spain has partnered with the Department of Education. Sixty-five schools are now teaching the Spanish language. The ambassador also cited the presence of the Instituto Cervantes in Manila, the third largest Instituto in the world, teaching the Spanish language to over 7,000 students a year.

But why is studying the Spanish language important? The most important reason for studying the Spanish language by the young Filipino generation, the ambassador stressed, is that it will open them to a lot of opportunities in the field of tourism as well as employment abroad. Filipinos who can speak the language can find their way especially in North America where there are over 50 million native speakers of Spanish.

So how do we say “It’s more fun in the Philippines” in Spanish? Quien sabe?