The parable is spoken in business that the First Generation provides the vision and the stability of the enterprise; the Second Generation develops it to its full blooming and the Third Generation sends it to its grievous ruins or sells it to strangers not having the same love for the mission of the enterprise.
Let’s pursue some analogous interpretation of people.
One always speaks of Ilocos-born late hotelier Anos Fonacier, dubbed as “The Father of Bohol Tourism” when thinking of the First Generation of tourism developers in the island. He took a gamble in the 1970s on an unknown island called Panglao and set up the Bohol Beach Club that opened Bohol to a whole new world of global tourism. It was a frontier-breaker that never looked back.
Part of that First Generation club is the late businessman Nanong Lim of the La Roca Hotel, George Laoof the Gie Hardens Hotel and the Dumaluan Beach Resort and Playa Blanca of the Horas. And a few others.
The Second Generation is made of bigger players—with ambitious business plans, deeper pockets and a wider worldview of things. They include Johnny Chan of the Bellevue Hotel whose landscape and five-star amenities have been praised by many visitors. Plus Henry Chosuey of Hennan Resort, the late Boholano consult Dodong Alegrado of the Bluewaters Group and Grand Benedicto of the Be Grand Resort.
The latest entrants are Justin Uy of the JPark group who will be building 1,100 rooms in a water-themed park which can be a “game changer” in any sense of the phrase and the Modala Resort, which has a Moadto strip mall with restaurants, bars and souvenirs shops, a one-stop haven.
In terms of governance, newly elected governor, former Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap, is entitled to call the 1995 tandem of Governor Rene Relampagos and Vice Governor Edgar Chatto as the First Generation. They developed a mission and vision blueprint of the original Tourism dream of former governor Constancio “Nonoy” Torralba of a Tourist Estate with an international airport back in 1987.
Of course, the late Governor Rico Aumentado is credited with the province-wide Bohol Circumferential Road and bringing back Bohol to the world tourism map. Yap likens himself to head the Second Generation as current CEO of Bohol—out to make the expansion of tourism as a buzzword.
Twenty-four years later after 1995, Bohol has become one of the country’s most desired destinations—enough to merit the establishment this year of the Panglao Bohol International Airport, the first of a kind ecotourist airport in the nation. At full capacity, the airport can host some 2 million tourists in a year, bigger in total than the 1.3 million registered Boholano residents in the province today.
The goal of the Second Generation private-sector players is to stay competitive—as they are also competing against the other islands in the country who are employing strategies to draw the third-largest dollar-earning industry-tourism—into their beneficial shores. Staying competitive means not pricing above industry level tolerance and respecting the “value for money” tenets.
It also means respecting the environment and not go the Boracay way—which was closed for months for environmental violations.
For governance, it means proper zoning of the island, peace and order, sanitation, cheap and stable power supply, constant potable water, fast internet connection, well-paved roads and available transportation for all types of vehicles.
Not doing so would pave the way for the so-called Third Generation, a curse, actually, which will descend like a horde of rapacious locusts upon the dead carcass of the tourism industry—murdered by wrong policies and bad business moves.
All Boholanos hope this need not happen in lifetimes.
Bingo Dejaresco, a former banker, is a financial consultant, media practitioner and book author. He is a Life member and Broadcast Media chairman of Finex. His views, however, are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of Finex and the BusinessMirror. dejarescobingo@yahoo.com