I am a great fan of the potential of the Philippines (and of the Filipino). I was born and raised in Manila, but there has always been the curiosity and eagerness to explore our culture through travel, conversations, daily interactions with people.
A month ago I left the family business and started working for the Department of Tourism. On the premise that I was there #1 to help tourism, and #2 to find out how government works from the inside. Personal observations so far?
1. Although the general environment is not built for efficiency, there are people in the DOT with the sincere desire to do their job well.
2. DOT is a big department (over 750 employees, I think), with many offices, each catering to different aspects of tourism (i.e. product development, media, marketing, logistics, planning, etc.).
3. Regional offices extend only to the provincial level. Tourism responsibility on the municipal level is LGU-based already (this requires further investigation).
4. To effectively implement projects, the DOT needs the willingness of the LGUs to support it. For example, the project I’m involved with now, the Island Paradise Adventure Race or IPAR, wouldn’t be possible without the active cooperation of the provinces in regions 4, 6 and 7.
I’m not eager to defend the DOT, as there are many obvious lapses. Before I joined its ranks, I was quick to blame it for not tapping all available resources, but now I’m learning that the right attitude is to think national, act local. If one really wants to help promote tourism, contact both the LGU or the local tourism council (from what I’ve seen, they are more than eager to get help) and the DOT regional office.
Again, these are all initial observations; there are still many things to be learned. But my hope lies in those who just really love our country and wish to help it prosper.
Agreed. I think that in order that we have an effective tourism, the government has to work hand-in-hand with the very people who have a stake in the places that it wants to promote. I think it gives a different insight (at least to the govt people) on how such places are viewed by the very people who live (and probablly depend) on it. It’s more than the business element and thats where the national stake and stewardship comes in.
stewardship– i like that. my theology professor in college shared a beautiful line on that: we are just borrowing our land from our children.
i have so many thoughts on tourism, but i don’t know where to start. before i came back, i used to be so gung-ho about this. having spent time living here again, i can see that we have a looooong long way to go.
first off, tourists come here for a reason. we have to face the fact that we’re not an impulse destination or a convenient stop along a regional circuit. the only way to get here is by air (which is expensive), although i have heard of sea travel possibilites with entries in mindanao. that means we have to be more aggressive and basically just push our country more. it’s really just marketing.
while i know that there are a lot of programs the DOT has, i just don’t see that much exposure overseas. i haven’t seen any WOW Phils ads on overseas tv or airport overhead TVs (i have seen singapore and hk ads a lot, and malaysia’s truly asia campaign rocks my socks – even if malaysia as a destination itself doesn’t have much appeal to me). i’ve seen print ads for indonesia and china on trains in japan, and believe me, after a long day as a salaryman, those ads look pretty darn enticing. maybe those other countries have bigger budgets, but then we probably just have to reprioritize where we spend our marketing money (cut down those large entourages that include families and friends when the DOT people do trade fairs overseas maybe?).
on the homefront, i also think we’re still too expensive. we’re probably at par on the mid to high-end (but less value for money), but there are no decent low cost options here as far as lodging goes. vietnam, laos, thailand and indonesia all beat us in terms of quality low-cost guesthouses in the major tourist destinations. likewise, our tourist infrastructure is just way behind, even compared to countries we’re supposedly economically ahead of. take vietnam for example. a city person would say that hanoi is so backward compared to manila (no major mall! no abundance of fancy cinemas or spas!). but for a tourist, it’s just too easy. my last trip there, i arrived in the evening and easily found a decent hotel at US$ 10 a night (aircon), and was immediately able to plan my next couple of days. there’s a lot of guesthouses or travel agencies that provide great day trips or multiple day packages that simplifies everything. i’ve done the rounds of malate (i figured that’s where most low to mid-end tourists end up) and it would be pretty hard (and costly) to figure out what to do in this country in the first place.
and ultimately, add to that the people. as with any other country, tourist destinations attract the worst touts, beggars, and con-artists. in our case, i don’t think we’re much worse off than say, indonesia, in this regard, but there still has to be some direction from the government on this. educate the people that tourists shouldn’t be seen as walking atm’s ripe for the picking. hell, we have the language advantage already, make the most use of that! we’re probably the easiest and most convenient country to travel in language-wise (try the backroads of thailand where you can’t even read the signs), let’s take advantage of that.
this went on longer than i wanted, but yeah, at the end of the day, i still want more people to see what we have to offer. we have a lot, we just have to get our act together and do it both ways: market them properly, and ensure that the infrastructure is there to make the experience worth it.
we just brought in over 60 people from overseas for our wedding in boracay, and pretty much all of them left with a smile on their face. lots of small stories that can smear the experience though (like jetski operators feeling up their customers, porter rip-offs, and the like). hay philippines.
everyone always has something to say about tourism. i know i always romanticized it, holding up high “how i think things can be improved.”
many ideas–bright ones at that–get lost in implementation. and im learning firsthand that most of the time, no one really wants to be accountable for implementation. especially in government.
coming up with a great project and starting it is actually doable.sustaining it is not, or at the least, it is difficult. according to a colleague who’s been with the DOT for more than 10 years, projects fail mostly because of politics– everyone wants to run his own show; no one wants to carry on flagship projects of previous officials.
fact of life.
so what’s a private citizen to do?
i say sell the country in his own circle,as you have done in boracay (congratulations on the wedding, btw!). be a walking salesman of what it means to be a filipino, to live in the philippines. work within one’s reach, with what you have control over, and stop barking at the government (it’s not only exhausting, it’s really just not effective).
statistics show that word of mouth is still one of the preferred modes of securing information about our country. we should capitalize on this. that’s why i have such faith in blogs and travel writing!
a few points: i know that durano’s campaign has been target marketing by countries. meaning strategies are tailored according to the needs and resources of each country–cab ads in london and hong kong, for example.
as for domestic travel being expensive, i just got out of the IPAR, a project with an objective of highlighting nontraditional activities and destinations (exotic food in laguna, olango island for birdwatching in cebu, etc.) that are accessible via public transportation. will be publishing all this information soon, email ipar-subscribe@yahoogroups.com for updates on routes and budget, etc.