BARELY recovered from their massive losses from the six-month closure of Boracay Island last year, hotels and resorts in this so-called crown jewel of Philippine tourism face close to P2.1 billion in losses in the next three months.
The unfortunate development arose from the sudden suspension by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) of new and additional chartered flights to Caticlan and Kalibo in Aklan, both gateways to the popular resort island.
In an interview with the BusinessMirror, Christine Ibarreta, president of the Hotel Sales and Marketing Association Inc. (HSMA), said, “almost all hotels [are affected by the CAB memo]. They [hotel rooms] are all blocked and paid in advance.”
Specifically, of the 14,000 rooms available on the island, resorts will lose money on some 7,000 rooms because of the CAB moratorium. Using an average nightly rate of P2,500, these resorts stand to lose a total of P735 million in one month alone, or close to P2.21 billion for three months — from July to September, considered the lean season on the island. “That’s already a conservative estimate,” Ibarreta said, as the projection is made using the lowest average nightly rate.
Many of these charter flights, she noted, affected their Chinese clients.
Regarding the memo’s basis, CAB Deputy Executive Director Alexander Paul T. Rivera explained: “The moratorium was issued as a followup measure to the Boracay environmental cleanup ordered by the President, to sustain the gains and benefits to protect the island.”
Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat, who is vice chairman of the CAB, failed to respond to this paper’s request for comment on the matter.
Meanwhile, officers of the three tourism stakeholders associations on Boracay—the Compliant Association of Boracay, Boracay Foundation Inc., and Boracay Chamber of Commerce and Industry—confirmed that they were not consulted by the Department of Tourism (DOT) nor any member of the Boracay Inter-Agency Task Force, before or after the CAB memo was issued.
“We’re not saying it’s wrong,” said Virgilio Sacdalan, vice chairman of the Compliant Association of Boracay. “We just want to know why [CAB issued the memo], considering we are already in the lean season,” he pointed out.
For her part, one sales and marketing director of a 300-room resort on the island said: “Everyone was shocked when the memo from CAB came out on June 11.” She declined to be named as she was not authorized to speak on the matter.
For her hotel alone, the bookings cover 1,450 room nights in July, which is equivalent to a P20-million loss.
Image credits: Jun N. Aguirre