National development seen from tourism

The Tourism Promotions Board (TPB) sees the tourism industry bringing about community development and generating livelihood nationwide.

TPB chief operating officer Cesar Montano cited this phenomenon as very evident in Bohol, where tourism can be observed making the province recover swiftly from the 7.2 magnitude earthquake in 2013.

“Bohol’s rise from that devastating calamity through best tourism practices has made me choose this province for the soft launch of TPB’s new marketing program focused on community development,” Montano pointed out.

Citing the marketing program as aligned with the National Tourism Development Plan and consistent with President Duterte’s vision of inclusive growth, Montano said:

“We are making tourism do what it does best – distribute wealth from the privileged to the marginalized, from the highly urbanized to the countryside. In effect, the marginalized wouldn’t have to wait for the benefits of development to trickle down to them. The TPB will strive to make tourism benefit the marginalized directly, right where they are, through effective marketing and promotion.”

The program involves promoting and highlighting all the contributions of the government, the industry and the local communities to tourism.

“After all, their combined efforts constitute the totality of a visitor’s tourism experience from the airport and back,” Montano remarked. He cited as examples the physical and social infrastructure, community enterprises and the best practices being developed by both the national and local governments and the people themselves for a tourism-driven community-based development.

“Right now, we are witnessing various government functions and multi-sectoral socio-cultural roles converging at tourism, both as an industry and a market, for which we have all the natural attributes to excel and become a cut above the rest. Tourism is growing as a market for our products to generate dollar revenues at almost 100 percent local content. In a way, tourism promotes exports, and vice-versa. That’s another point of convergence,” Montano said.

He said such phenomenon made the TPB refocus its efforts on promoting communities as a marketing priority and strategy, with Bohol among the models of best practices.

Bohol’s Loboc River Cruise being managed by the municipal government provides a captive market for the local folks, who produce meats and vegetables according to visitor requirements year round.

For the cruise, Loboc now has a landscaped facility with a visitors’ lounge, washrooms, souvenir shops, covered walkway and a long quay with a wellmanaged queuing system and a complete contingent of lifeguards and service personnel.

The Loboc “side show” of songs and dances is literally a community and family affair. Kids perform on weekends and the parents and grandparents on weekdays when the children are in school, according to Bohol Federation of Travel and Tour Operators president Maria Lourdes Tuyor-Sultan.

“P100 of the P450 toll fee goes to the barangays for the upkeep of the areas around the river, whose flanks are lighted at night by lamp posts along its length,” Sultan said.

The rest of the toll fee goes to the municipal government for the maintenance and development of the tourism complex.

Also a community affair is the mass production of the calamay delicacy in Jagna town, where a local association uses a heat-regulated process and food-grade stainless steel equipment to lengthen shelf life from three to 14 days and make sales volume hit P1.9 million in 2014, P3.6 million in 2015, and P6.1 million in 2016.

The Tarsier Sanctuary being run by the Philippine Tarsier Foundation in Barangay Canapnapan, Corella town supports 18 forest workers from the entrance fees of tourists while protecting a sensitive ecology of some 167 hectares spanning three municipalities.

The sanctuary, according to tarsier conservationist Carlito Pizzaras, drew 200,000 visitors in 2013, 100,000 in 2014, 600,000 in 2015, and 800,000 in 2016.

Similarly, the loomweavers cooperative in Tubigon town provides livelihood to the women in the community. It attracts local and foreign visitors, who buy various finished products from the woven raffia fiber at factory prices. Since 2014, new designs have been making their way to Asian countries and the US for famous fashion brands.

Even the government-owned 25-hectare Balicasag Island Dive Resort of the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA) is now generating income for the first time since 1989. Despite its capital-intensive operations involving self-generated power and the use of potable water hauled all the way from Tagbilaran, the resort managed to post a seven-percent increase in sales from P5.806 million in January-April 2016 to P6.213 million in the same period this year.