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I had been thinking tourism the past couple of weeks. My eldest sister who is based in Washington DC arrived the other week to attend the 50th anniversary reunion of her UP College of Medicine class. Her American husband is here too. A few days later, my sister’s New York-based son also arrived with his family. In a family reunion at my other sister’s house at Tagaytay Midlands, we got to talk about what’s great about visiting the Philippines.
The best insights on how to sell Philippine tourism I got from the past week’s experiences of my nephew and his family. After a brief overnight stay at the Marriott at Resorts World, he and his family (wife and two kids) left early rthe next day for Busuanga. He cancelled a reservation at Shangrila Boracay because he wanted to see an unspoiled view of the Philippines, not a virtual Makati with a beach. His family is visiting for the first time while he himself had been here before, but basically in Metro Manila.
He did all the bookings himself through the Internet. He stayed at a resort in Culion I have never heard of. But they had fun and he posted really nice pictures of them amidst the unspoiled beauty of Culion and Coron on Facebook. Their New York friends, who are probably freezing in a New York winter, could only say how envious they are of them. They snorkeled and couldn’t believe how clear the water was and how exotic the aquatic life. They even saw a partially sunk WWII Japanese gun boat.
Their stay at Puerto Princesa was just as much fun, they told me. They went to see the underground river and got their feet tired and muddy taking a five-kilometer hike in the jungle back to their hotel, an adventure that included a thrilling ride down a zip line. Again, the one word that described their Puerto Princesa experience was fun. In other words, they got what they came here for… to have fun. Their expectations were met.
An Intramuros tour with Carlos Celdran gave them an interesting view of historical Manila. They still have on their agenda, a Corregidor tour and a trip to trace our family roots in Camiling, Tarlac. They will also do a Pinatubo trek before they finally leave for Hong Kong to catch a flight back to the winter wonderland of New York City. My guess is, this is going to be one of the more memorable foreign trips they have made because they had fun.
Selling Philippine tourism on the unique selling proposition of our country being the place to have the most fun is the first lesson I learned from my nephew’s experience. The other lesson that seems obvious is to quickly take our guests out of Metro Manila. My nephew and his family arrived late in the evening so Manila’s grime was largely invisible to their jetlagged eyes. As soon as daylight came, they were off to Palawan through the more civilized Terminal 3. Even if their gateway to the Philippines was the horrible Terminal 1, they must have been too tired after an 18 hour flight to notice its many shortcomings.
After a week of fun in various places in unspoiled Palawan, they already have wonderful images and memories of our country. By the time they gOt to see Manila last Monday, the fun they had in Palawan will hopefully minimize any negative impressions of Metro Manila. Thus, any successful tourism campaign must, as I have always said in this column, involve bypassing Manila as the gateway airport to our otherwise beautiful country. I don’t know why past tourism secretaries have not seen the wisdom of this strategy.
I had coffee with Tourism Secretary Mon Jimenez at Rockwell just before the holidays. I am glad he agreed with me on this point. Mon told me he is not too worried about the problems of NAIA 1 dragging down his ambitious target of ten million tourist visitors by 2016. Look, he said, “for purposes of getting tourists into this country, my gateway airport is the best airport in the world — Changi International Airport in Singapore.”
The good news is… tourism entrepreneurs in Singapore are looking for more interesting places to visit other than Malaysia. From what I gathered, the Singaporeans are very interested in promoting the Philippines as a tourist destination because they see our vast potential as the fun place of the region.
Mon related that some weeks ago, a group of these Singaporean entrepreneurs were stuck for an hour over NAIA in one of those dreadful manifestations of CAAP incompetence — congestion. To their amazement and relief, the entrepreneurs were ecstatic about the congestion. They see that to mean more people are coming to Manila and that is evidenced by our congestion problem. So they desperately want to be here and be part of the potential boom. But our airport authorities must still do something about congestion in the skies over NAIA before the entrepreneurs figure out that it is caused more by CAAP incompetence than anything else.
Nevertheless, we should take advantage of all the interest being expressed by investors to our tourism program. Once they make their investments, it is to their interest to sell the Philippines abroad. I am told there was even one interesting offer to buy or lease the old Post Office building in Plaza Lawton or Liwasang Bonifacio. They want to convert it to a luxury hotel the way they converted an old Post Office building to a hotel in Singapore. I hope the government gives this proposal serious consideration. That may just revive Manila as a tourist destination, specially if DOT speeds up its development program for Fort Santiago and Intramuros.
Secretary Jimenez said he postponed the launch of the country campaign because of the Cagayan de Oro tragedy. The timing is not right, he said. But he promised to launch it this January. I don’t know what he has in mind but I sure hope it is a campaign geared for our foreign market and not one that caters to local opinion leaders. No matter how well liked the WOW Philippines campaign of Dick Gordon, I think it is too local oriented and fails to provide a target foreign tourist a good reason to come here.
Based on what I have learned from my nephew’s experience over the past two weeks in our country, the key word is fun. And I am not the only one who thinks so. Just before Christmas, my colleague Wilson Lee Flores tweeted this: “WAKE UP! Dept of Tourism, sell or promote the Philippines as Asia’s best place to have fun. We’re the Spain, Greece & Caribbean of Asia!”
I am glad we have a tourism secretary who goes around a negative to produce a positive… one whose unadulterated enthusiasm for selling this country has captivated even this old cynical ogre to think that getting 10 million visitors by 2016 is a walk in the park. The thing is, just get started. Getting started is the most difficult thing to do in this country.
To his credit, Mon has started to deliver. He united the Tourism Congress. He convinced Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima to withdraw his objection to proposed law that deals with the common carrier tax irritating foreign carriers. He has also convinced the DFA and the Immigration people to grant visa on arrival to tourists from India and China among other nationalities. Go get those numbers Mon J.
Latebreaker
Just got word from a reliable source that Philippine Airlines Chairman Lucio Tan “shook hands” with San Miguel’s Ramon Ang for 40 percent of PAL but with management going to San Miguel. When contacted, Mr. Ang would neither confirm nor deny but said they are talking again.
This means Mr. Ang has changed his mind about acquiring an equity position in the airline. He previously told me it would be very difficult to earn a profit on the billion dollars a buyer of the airline must invest in PAL.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld
Jewish Christmas
This one is from Lito Balquiedra.
After realizing she had one Jewish pupil in her class, Ms. Jones asked Isaac Cohen how his family celebrates Christmas.
Isaac said, “Well, it’s the same thing every year...Dad comes home from the office. We all pile into the Rolls Royce, then we drive to Dad’s toy factory. When we get inside, we look at all the empty shelves... and begin to sing: “What A Friend We Have in Jesus”. Then we all go to the Bahamas.”
Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is bchanco@gmail.com. He is also on Twitter @boochanco
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