THE government may dangle incentives to foreign carriers to encourage them to mount direct flights to tourism destinations instead of Manila, a state official said.
Department of Tourism Route Development Team Head Erwin F. Balane said creating new direct services to secondary airports such as Cebu, Bohol and Palawan will help generate more tourism potentials.
Direct flights entice tourists to visit a certain destination, for example Cebu, as this removes the hassle of transiting from another airport like Manila just to get to the tourism sites.
“Right now, the game is encouraging airlines to fly directly to destinations,” he said. “It’s quite hard for airlines to operate the first flight because it entails a lot of expenses.”
Hence, Balane said, the government may provide incentives to entice airlines to mount new direct flights. “For them to operate a new route, they negotiate for incentives to cushion their investment,” he said. “They look at what incentives a country could provide.”
Incentives, Balane explained, could be in the form of discounts on landing, parking and take-off fees.
Providing incentives, he added, is a global practice even for airports that yield high traffic.
“Singapore, for example, despite being flown by a lot of airlines, provides substantial incentives. China, as well, like in Kunming, provides as much as 50-percent discounts on fees. Bangkok, too, has even better incentives,” Balane said.
He said the tourism department will encourage the giving of incentives to airlines to “provide support” for the carriers, while they try to make business sense of the new route.
The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines operates almost all of the airports across the Philippines.
The incentive scheme could help the government achieve its target of attracting 12 million foreign tourists by 2022, at the end of President Duterte’s term.