Time has come for faith-based tourism

Part of the Cebu Business Month (CBM) activities of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry Inc. (CCCI) on Tuesday was the Tourism Summit and one of the most important speakers was an old friend, former Tourism secretary Mina T. Gabor. She spoke in a Farm Tourism forum that I attended in Tagaytay City three years ago. At the CBM summit, Gabor spoke about faith-based tourism concept for 2021. I have no doubt that she was planning to capture the tourism market that may come to Cebu to celebrate our 500 years as a Catholic nation.

She revealed that international tourist arrivals increased by 6 percent to 1.4 billion in 2018, which means a 3.7 percent growth in the world tourism industry. These were figures she got for Europe, which is considered a “mature market” that got 713 million in arrivals in 2018. So the increase of 6 percent was truly remarkable, according to Gabor.

She also revealed that 18 percent of the world population could travel without a need for a visa, while 15 percent could get their visas upon arrival at their destinations, while 6 percent was able to obtain what is called an e-visa. Just an example: We, Filipinos, can visit the Holy Land in Israel without a need for a visa, which is Israel’s way of thanking us Filipinos for accepting the Israeli nation after World War II.

Gabor also noted that the future of world religions is growing. As of 2015, Christianity was the world’s largest religion with an estimated 2.2 billion adherents, nearly a third or 31 percent of the 6.9 billion population of the entire world. Islam was second with its 1.6 billion adherents or 23 percent of the world’s population. However, between the years 2010 and 2050, it is expected that the world’s population would rise to 9.3 billion, a 35 percent increase, which means also an increase in the number of Christian and Muslim adherents. Thus, this is where faith-based tourism comes in.

Like Gabor, I believe that the time has come for faith-based tourism. For instance, we never sold Sinulog Festival based on faith, but sold it as a huge fiesta occasion. While we submit that many tourists have come to see the Sinulog Festival, they are not here on a pilgrimage. They are not here to attend the solemn procession for the Señor Sto. Niño on Saturday. During our Holy Week celebrations, for instance, we have never sold Holy Thursday’s Visita Iglesia to Christian tourists. While I submit that Christianity is losing its adherents -- that I found out in my last trip to Europe where people admit that they only go to church for baptism, weddings or funerals – but that can change if we try to sell them what we have.

In the end, what Gabor was teaching us was for us to take advantage of our Christianity by selling our faith, especially when two years from now, we shall be celebrating our 500 years as a Catholic nation. Let us see if any of our local tourism in-bound companies would accept the presentation of the former DOT secretary Gabor, which has not yet been adopted by the tourism industry. Abangan!

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A few weeks ago when President Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte demanded that the Commission on Elections (Comelec) should get rid of Smartmatic, it gave us some hope that our nation is truly headed for a better electoral process that somehow was misused by the Yellowtards to keep the Liberal Party (LP) in political power. Thankfully, the 2019 elections have all but proven to the Filipino electorate that the LP has finally disappeared into the dustbin of history, that even if its members run in a different name and called themselves as Otso Deretso, it did not fool the Filipino electorate and voted them out of political power.

After discrediting Smartmatic, President Duterte suddenly criticized the country’s party-list system, calling it an “evil” system funded by the rich and exploited by generals involved in illegal drugs. The President said that some generals who are into the narcotics trade ran for public office as party-list representatives. To be totally honest about it, I’ve been against the party-list system since time immemorial. I call it the political plaything of Imee Marcos when the Marcos dictatorship was still in power. At this point, there is hope that this nation will finally get rid of the system. What we need is a genuine constitutional and political reform.

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