STAKEHOLDERS in Boracay Island will be preparing a marketing plan, with the help of the Department of Tourism (DOT), to help promote the island to key markets abroad.
Their pitch could get some boost from this latest development: Condé Nast Traveler has just included Boracay in its list of “30 Best Winter Vacations to Take This Season.” The prestigious travel publication noted: “[This] itty-bitty speck [just under 4 square miles] in the Western Philippines is as close to a tropical idyll as you’ll find in Southeast Asia, with gentle coastlines and Instagram-worthy sunsets. Fold in a thriving nightlife scene, and you have one of the top tourist spots in the region.”
This developed as hotels and resorts on the island have reported lower guest bookings even toward New Year’s Eve, which is considered a “super peak” season, said Tourism Congress of the Philippines (TCP) Jose C. Clemente III. “The resorts were saying that they have lower arrivals for Christmas and even for New Year, for December 31, they are down from previous years,” he told the BusinessMirror, after meeting with stakeholders from the island on December 10.
The resorts failed to submit, however, data and figures to back up their claim of decreased bookings.
Clemente said many factors are behind the lower arrivals on Boracay toward the Christmas-New Year period. Among these are “less flights [to Kalibo and Caticlan], airfares have gone up…like there were cancellations of charters earlier this year, so the Chinese tourists were put off by this.” (See, “C.A.B. changes mind, allows charter flights anew to Boracay gateways,” in the BusinessMirror, July 17, 2019.)
Data from the DOT-Region 6 (Western Visayas) showed total tourist arrivals reached 1.6 million, of which 729,415 were foreigners, in the nine months to September 2019. Total arrivals were 4.6 percent higher than the 1.53 million in the same period in 2017, of which 730,511 were foreigners.
Total tourism receipts (from foreign and domestic travelers) reached some P46 billion from January to September 2019, up 8.223 percent over the P42.5-billion receipts in the same period in 2017. No data was made available for just inbound receipts.
Meanwhile, on Clemente’s prodding, the stakeholders agreed in a meeting on December 16, this time with DOT officials, to go on a “destination-specific road show,” to push just Boracay Island, starting next year. If the DOT agrees to support such a road show, “The stakeholders said they were willing to kick in some funding to match whatever DOT is contributing.”
He said the stakeholders hope to finish gathering the inputs and suggestions, which TCP will consolidate for submission to Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat. “We hope we can submit this [proposed marketing plan] by January,” he asserted.
Clemente also said the stakeholders are now considering expanding the markets to be tapped instead of focusing on the Chinese market, which has driven the arrival numbers on the island.
“They can tap Japan again; the Philippines just received the Excellent Partner Award from the Japanese. We can leverage on that,” he noted. The award was given to the DOT during the Japan Tourism Expo in October, in recognition of the agency’s role in rehabilitating Boracay Island.
Clemente, who is also president of Rajah Tours Philippines, said Europe is still a viable market. “Europeans were the first to discover Boracay in the 1980s, but look where they are now? The Germans are ranked 10th among Boracay’s source markets.”
He added, “We never took Boracay off our offerings”—tour operators always sell the island when they join travel fairs abroad. But he noted the resorts have not adjusted their prices, and except for a handful, no longer join the travel fairs.
For one, Boracay resorts still impose surcharges during the so-called peak and super peak seasons. “They were saying they received cancellations also from the Chinese market for the Chinese New Year. So why are they still imposing a surcharge?” he asked.
“Hopefully they’ve seen what happens when they put all their eggs in one basket,” Clemente pointed out, referring to Boracay’s reliance on the Chinese market. Published reports noted that mainland Chinese tourists are traveling less to Southeast Asian countries, with China Travel News saying trips to Thailand fell by 4.31 percent, and to Vietnam by 0.82 percent in the first five months of 2019. It was a complete reversal from the strong growths of 27.38 percent and 37 percent in the same period last year, respectively.
In the Philippines, arrivals from China remain strong, having jumped 41.5 percent to 1.5 million from January to October 2019, accelerating from the 30.7- percent increase to 1.06 million in the same period in 2018.
Image credits: Nonoy Lacza