EDITORIAL - The good and the bad

The other day saw a milestone in Cebu tourism after the first flight from the Mactan-Cebu International Airport to Bantayan Island.

People can now get to the island after a 30-minute flight on a 72-seater ATR twin-engine turboprop aircraft, as opposed to a twisting and turning six-hour land trip, usually in a crowded bus, followed by a boat ride.

But the news gets better, it’s only ?888 per way, reasonably affordable for those who have always wanted to visit Bantayan Island but were put off by the long road trip.

With this, natives to the island now have a quicker way to get to and from there, while more tourists are expected to be able to visit the island, which is home to the towns of Bantayan, Madridejos, and Santa Fe.

There’s no doubt this is a good development, but there is always some bad that comes with any good. And with the influx of tourists and tourism comes problems and issues like pollution, over-commercialization, overcrowding, and the like.

This isn’t us being a prophet of doom and gloom; this is us giving a cautionary tale.

We have seen for ourselves what happens when some tourist spots become victims of their own success, like what happened in Cordova Town where those managing floating cottages could no longer keep up with the number of people who came, like the flower farms in Barangay Sirao that had to turn away people after hordes of visitors trampled their flowers, or Kawasan Falls and the canyoneering operations in Badian which had to be closed for a while because illegal structures were being built there.

Then there’s Boracay which had to be closed off for a good part of a year after it could no longer cope with sanitation issues.

And with tourists now being able to easily get to what was once considered a tempting but hard-to-get-to paradise, the municipalities in Bantayan Island should be prepared to deal with the influx of tourists as well as the repercussions that come with it.