Routes Asia 2019 seen bringing 1M more seats to Cebu

CEBU CITY — Routes Asia 2019, hosted by the Queen City of the South and the Department of Tourism (DOT), is expected to yield roughly 1 million more seats to Cebu from different destinations across the globe, akin to what happened to Manila, when it hosted the event a few years back.

Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat said Cebu’s hosting of the 17th edition of the aviation networking event will bolster the government’s bid to further develop the Philippines as a “must-see” destination in Asia, adding the event will likely generate more demand and supply for air travel to the country.

“The Philippines’s hosting of Routes Asia 2019 marks another milestone in our routedevelopment program. There are many more projects in our pipeline that will allow us to sustain the robust growth of the Philippine travel and tourism industry,” she said.

Routes Asia 2019 attracted over 800 delegates, 100 airline executives, 20 airport representatives and 30 tourism authorities from all over the world. It is the premier routedevelopment affair in the Asia Pacific region.

“We cannot stop now, not after we just reached a record high of 7.1 million visitor arrivals, a 7.65-percent growth rate, besting the average growth rate of 5 percent, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization,” Puyat said.

She added the country can only “aim higher and dream bigger” as part of the 15-strong powerhouse countries that the World Travel and Tourism Council declared in 2018. These countries were said to have recorded absolute growth in terms of tourism numbers in the last seven years.

Puyat attributed this to the tourism agency’s aggressive push for the development of new routes to and from the different hubs in the Philippines, as well as to the government’s push to build more airport infrastructure. “In 2018 alone, 40 new international routes were mounted by foreign and local airlines from Korea, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Australia. We offer a total of 1.6 million total air seats to the Philippines. With this event, We are looking forward to a million more,” she said.

Tourism Undersecretary Benito C. Bengzon Jr. noted that when Manila hosted Routes Asia in 2016, in just a over a year, the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) was able to “generate an additional 1 million seats.”

“The 1 million seats for Cebu is a fighting target,” he said. “We hope that more airlines are going to mount more flights for us to get more seats.”