Revenge tourism fueling post-pandemic tourist boom
AFTER two years of lockdowns and movement restrictions brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, Filipinos have finally found the best revenge: to travel.
Indeed, many Filipinos nowadays are on traveling mode and are actually traveling more than before. The Department of Tourism (DOT) has affirmed that revenge travel is real and has become an organic phenomenon.
“Revenge tourism is fueling the post-pandemic tourist boom and ever since the Philippines opened up to international leisure travel in February, we have seen a gradual rise in arrivals both from foreigners and our balikbayans. Domestic travel which is actually 85 percent of tourism contribution to the GDP has been on an upswing as well ever since the different local destinations have reopened with fewer restrictions,” Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat said in her opening remarks during the Businessmirror Coffee Club forum titled, “The Philippines and Revenge Tourism – Are We Ready?”
Romulo said the agency has consistently focused on not just to getting back to normal but to paving the way for a better normal. This will be achieved through the rebuilding of the nation’s tourism industry in a way that will make it stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive.
“So, despite the image that revenge travel conjures of crazy people rushing to crowd the beaches, what we are actually experiencing is that people will be traveling more thoughtfully. They want to immerse themselves and experience more things while being aware of the negative impacts that over-tourism brings. Revenge travel is real but so is our determination to save our spots and make tourism in the Philippines more fun for everyone,” she said.
Prepared
CHARLES Bautista, Deputy Chief Operating Officer for Marketing and Promotions of the Tourism Promotions Board (TPB) agreed that the tourism sector is fully prepared for leisure tourists as well as “very much ready to become a strong MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) destination in this new normal.”
“Today, we make sure that we are facilitating vaccination across the different tourism industries for our different frontliners in hotels, airlines, and restaurants to make sure that when we reopen our borders all our tourism workers are already vaccinated and prepared to welcome guests in the new normal,” he said.
Bautista said that part of TPB’S work also includes a visit to all destinations and making sure that they comply with the prescribed health and safety protocols.
“And at the same time to see if they are ready to take in tourists or determine the number of tourists they can take in and making sure that all our members and their tourism facilities are up to date,” he added.
Fe Abling-yu, president of the Philippine Tour Operators Association (PHILTOA), was happy to note that the country’s tour operators have continually validated destinations as early as October 2020 and ended this April 2021.
“Our focus right now is domestic tourism. We develop new destinations in the process. I think this is one of the very good effects brought about by the pandemic. Let’s take it on a very positive side now. We were able to discover more of the Philippines. There are many places to visit in the Philippines, places that we should patronize,” Abling-yu said.
Ready for a better normal
MEANWHILE, several big names and established hospitality groups have fully adjusted to the new normal. In fact, they intend to go the extra mile not just to accommodate revenge travelers but to make each and every traveler safe.
Margarita Fuentes Munsayac, VP for Sales and Marketing of Bluewater Resorts, said the resort made a lot of adjustments to meet the post-pandemic requirements.
Munsayac said Bluewater’s most of the recent investments were geared towards addressing the health and safety protocols such as the putting up of washbasins at all entrances and the disinfection/cleaning process of their rooms. She added that they spent three months studying and reviewing the guidelines of the IATF (Inter-agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases).
Further, Bluewater had to speed up its digital road map to come up with contactless checkins/check-outs and ordering of food from the resort’s restaurants, among many others.
“And we never closed Bluewater Malibago throughout the pandemic. In sales and marketing, we really went into alternative market segments wherein the health and safety protocols were very important. We had the alternative market of the BPOS and in the succeeding months we had to address being a quarantine facility,” Munsayac said.
These experiences, Munsayac said, have helped trained her people to get used to the health protocols which are still in place. These also enhanced the resort’s customer experience for Filipino hospitality.
“Pre-pandemic, Bluewater Resorts were catering to 80 percent foreign guests. So we had to shift gear. We had to be more specific to our local markets. You know, Filipinos as travelers are more demanding and are picky about destinations. We had to look closely into this and you know this will be the norm. The new normal will always be about this: We had to provide them the experience of the Filipino hospitality but at the same time be very stringent about health and safety protocols,” she said.
Demanding and price conscious
ALEX AQUINO, Head Marketing, Swisshotel Clark, Widus Hotel and Casino agreed that Filipino travelers tend to be demanding, priceconscious, and always on the lookout for value of money.
“So we really have to adapt, listen and understand what they really need. We were resilient and adaptive to what the customers need. More than the guests we also need to make our staff feel safe, comfortable, and confident that their working environment is safe. That’s for them to say we feel safe and we could also make our customers feel safe, too,” Aquino said.
“Swisshotel just opened its door last March. But we were already fully operational during the Holy Week season. Our other property, Widus Hotel and Casino, operated during the pandemic and was never closed to cater to our customers,” he added.
For Sue Geminiano, Marketing Manager of Hotel Sogo, the property did its share for the new normal protocol adjustments.
“We added more sophisticated ways of disinfecting. We had a UVC light for disinfection and this is used every after use of the room. We also had the UV filter in all our air-conditioning units so that all the air that passes through the aircon would be filtered more than the normal filtering. We also double our airway exchange,” she said.
The Sogo Group also boasts of 11 anti-covid innovations which it intends to continue “for us to protect ourselves and our guests. We also had these Covid sniffer dogs which does preliminary screening of our employees before they go on duty. Our automatic thermal scan-controlled doors do not open if one’s body temperature is above normal.”
To further ensure the safety of its guests, Sogo Hotel now does online reservations. Aside from online booking agencies like Agoda, Booking.com, Speeda, and Everything Online, it now does online reservations through its website and social media fan pages.