Cebu tourism to profit from $7.1M joint aid

CEBU, Philippines - Cebu is one of the four beneficiary destinations in the Philippines to the US$7. 1 million joint technical assistance from Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Department of Tourism (DOT-7) regional director Rowena Montecillo announced that together with Bohol, Palawan and Davao, Cebu is among the identified destinations that will take part of the international budget aimed at improving these destinations’ tourism competitiveness.

"DOT (central office) has already signed a memorandum of agreement with them last month for the assistance that is targeted to start implementing this year up to 2016," said Montecillo.

She said the US$7.1 million grant is intended to help boost industry competitiveness which includes skills training programs for the private sector, local government units, civil society as well as tourism related agencies.

New system of accreditation and development of standards for service quality are also part of the projects' thrust, she added.

CIDA and ADB signed a memorandum of agreement on this project recently, and guidelines are presently being drafted. Target project implementation period is until 2016.

"I'm glad that of the four pilot areas, two (Cebu and Bohol) are from Central Visayas. This will really help the industry in the region especially that we are among the most popular destinations in the country today," Montecillo said.

When the evaluators visited the different areas for the project, Montecillo said that they saw the need to include the two provinces in the pilot areas because of their tourism potentials.

Cebu and Bohol are considered key destinations in the country that should be looked into for more improvement as they are currently attracting more tourists.

"The same with Palawan for its underground river and Davao," said Montecillo.

Earlier, Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez Jr. said, "this comes at an opportune time when we need to scale up the development of tourism towards our bid of 10 million international visitor arrivals and 56.1 million domestic travelers by 2016."

Furthermore, Jimenez said that the country should be ready to improve the tourism plant and enhance the quality of our services to ensure high visitor satisfaction levels which will trigger word-of-mouth marketing. /JMD (FREEMAN)