Roadmaps for hotel, MICE sectors underway

The Board of Investments (BOI) and the Department of Tourism (DOT) have come up with industry roadmaps for the hotel and the meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions (MICE) sectors to enhance their competitiveness and enable them to contribute more to inclusive growth and poverty reduction.

The BOI said the new roadmaps serve as guide to all stakeholders in developing priority interventions to ad- dress challenges that are restraining the full potential of the hotel and MICE industries.

The roadmaps would also help define government positions and strategies for trade and investment negotiations, as well as identify valuechain gaps to guide industry promotion.

“The BOI recognizes the importance of hotel and accommodation in the value chain of tourism sector. We have witnessed the capability of the Philippines to stage international events. No wonder, in the midst of proliferation of global hotel chains in major cities, our local hotel developers are also expanding aggressively. There is a strong demand for more quality accommodations not only from tourists but also business travelers, foreign consultants and expatriates who temporarily reside in the country,” Trade Assistant Secretary Felicitas Agoncillo-Reyes said.

BOI executive director Ma. Corazon Halili-Dichosa said the government plans to immediately convene the sectoral working groups for the two industries and start on the implementation of the roadmaps.

“We intend to pursue a proactive and targeted approach to address these concerns in close partnership with the relevant associations, academe and other government agencies. This will hopefully build your industry’s global competitiveness while also helping local stakeholders to compete on equal footing with the rest of our ASEAN neighbors,” Dichosa said.

The hotel sector and MICE industries have been identified by the DOT as among, the main tourism components in the National Tourism Development Plan (NTDP), which seeks to increase foreign tourist arrivals to 12 million and 90 million domestic travelers by 2022.

“The plan is to develop a globally competitive, environmentally sustainable and socially responsible tourism industry that promotes inclusive growth through employment generation and equitable distribution of income thereby contributing to building a foundation for a high-trust society,” DOT director Milagros Say said.

The BOI said tourism-related industries accounted for 8.6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2016.

It contributed P1.245 trillion last year, 13.7 percent higher from 2015’s P1.09 trillion.

Employment in tourism was estimated at 5.2 million in 2016, accounting for 12.8 percent of the total national employment figure.