Tourism work

THE Tourism department has been criticized for the past weeks and months; from the unpopular recommendation of a foreign-backed theme park to a much criticized marketing and promotional material. With all that brunt, this will be the best time to apply the quality that is indispensable for all tourism officers: “smile”.

Far from common perception that a tourism office only concerns itself with giving tourists assistance and tourism promotions, a functioning tourism office is also actually in charge of various duties like; facilitating coordinated tours, organizing festivals and special events, engaging in sisterhood and international linkages, promoting town products and investments, protecting heritage and history, supporting local arts and culture, doing office administration and operations tasks, and collecting tourism statistics, among others.

In this generation’s acceptance of everything fused to tourism – sports tourism, business tourism, medical tourism, religious tourism (pilgrimage), adventure tourism, pleasure tourism, agri-tourism, eco-tourism, and what have you – the tourism personnel would always bear the burden of almost everything related to… anything.

In Benguet, there are only two tourism officers among the 13 municipalities with permanent appointments which includes Ma’am Anabel of Tuba and I, the rest are designates which make them the more hardworking people in their local government units. The Benguet Provincial Tourism Office has about nine personnel, and Baguio City has a complete functioning office which is double the number of Benguet’s (Kalinga is also contending with that). But, this is nothing compared to tourism offices in the southern towns of the country like Puerto Princesa City which has thirty-two personnel and does not even include the more than a dozen job orders. When we were there, we actually thought that the tourism office is bigger and more-manned than its own City hall.

Aside from the local government offices, what makes or breaks a town’s tourism industry are the non-government or private groups and people’s organization that are active in a place. Baguio City, for instance, has the Panagbenga Foundation to organize the Summer Capital’s main tourism and community event, and Palawan, for example, has the most active NGOs dedicated for the protection of the ecological-tourism areas. These groups are the vital links to better tourism systems in a locality.

Every quarter, Tourism officers are convened by the Provincial Tourism Operations Office to coordinate activities, discuss related matters, and more importantly, to collect statistics which will be forwarded to the Department of Tourism-CAR Office. The DOT Region office also invites us for quarterly meetings usually held in the different Cordillera provinces so that we can also promote the tourism sites of each place. Once a year, tourism personnel are also invited to the Association of Tourism Officers of the Philippines (ATOP) Convention which is held alternately among Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. When one establishes linkages in those conventions, tourism offices of different cities usually give invitations for their special events, and may even explore possibilities of having sister town bonds.

Those work-related travels, however, are the only consolation for tourism personnel who often work on Saturdays and Sundays (even holidays) without overtime pay. Tourism work is not really glamorous for the most part as it involves heavy leg work and mental strength; overnight preparations to receive dignitaries, carrying heavy bags as a tour guide for VIPs, very early call time for shootings, becoming the receiving end for criti-