THE Department of Tourism (DOT) is helping hotels source local agricultural products, an extension of its mandate to promote farm tourism in the country.
With Sen. Cynthia A. Villar as its chief architect, the Farm Tourism Development Act was enacted in 2016, which seeks to promote farms as tourism sites.
In a news briefing, Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat said the DOT is “going beyond that. The biggest question we always ask is, how can the law help the farmers? In this regard, we have already held a Farm Tourism Summit in Manila [in 2019], and we plan to hold another in Iloilo, Clark and perhaps in Cagayan de Oro [in 2020], where we will be linking farmers with the hotels.”
The law sets up a Farm Tourism Development Board, which shall set the overall direction in the implementation of a Farm Tourism Strategic Action Plan. The DOT chief chairs the board with the agriculture secretary as vice chair and the trade and industry secretary as a member. Other members include presidents of an educational institution providing farm tourism, a national farm tourism organization, a national inbound tour operators association, and national federation of farmers’ cooperative.
Romulo-Puyat said, “Many hotels have started to come in,” looking for a steady supply of agricultural products. “In fact, just recently, I spoke with the chairman of the Accor Hotel Group [for Asia Pacific, Michael Issenberg] and they are putting up 22 hotels in the Philippines. They would need a good source [of farm produce], so that’s why we will be going around the country.”
New hotels
She added, “In Clark alone they will be putting up five new hotels, including the world-famous Banyan Tree hotel. What we plan to do is to link these hotels to the farmers directly. It just makes sense that hotels will get their supply directly from the farmers themselves, without the middlemen. We will help the famers consolidate so they can meet the demands of the hotels,” said the DOT chief.
Romulo-Puyat, who was undersecretary at the Department of Agriculture (DA) for 12 years before heading the DOT in 2017, noted the common problem of farmers is the lack of transportation to carry their produce from their farms to the market. However, she disclosed, “Victory Liner has approached us in the DOT and pitched in to help. They have already committed two buses for farmers coming from Benguet, in addition to giving them a free ride going to Clark. It’s part of their CSR [corporate social responsibility].”
Symbiotic
She added, “I am very happy that I was able to bring together my work in the DA and now with the DOT. That is to say, the hotel comes out with the demand, while the farmers provide the supply with their produce of high agriculture practice.”
She noted that the project with Accor isn’t the first time the DOT is helping farmers sell their produce directly to buyers. “We actually did that already with El Nido Resorts. All the rice famers there supply El Nido resorts with their produce. What happens is that the farmers get a higher yield by having their target market in El Nido resorts. There is no more middlemen. This is what we want to replicate, the El Nido model.”
Everybody’s biz
While she noted that the Farm Tourism Development Act of 2016 was crafted to “promote day tours to farms, we wanted to go beyond this. That’s why we targeted the market linkage between farmers and hotels. The farmers now have a sure and steady market for their produce. That makes tourism everybody’s business. When you have tourism, it helps the local souvenir shops, farmers, it employs people, tour guides, transportation, etc.”
As per the DOT web site, there are 419 accredited farm tourism sites in the country as of December 27, 2019.
Sustainability catalyst
In an interview with the BusinessMirror, Gaynor Reid, AccorHotels’s Communications Vice President for Asia Pacific, said the hospitality group has 15 hotels in the pipeline, all set to open by 2025. At present it manages eight hotels, which include Raffles and Fairmont hotels in Makati, Movenpick Mactan Island in Cebu, Movenpick Resort and Spa in Boracay, Novotel Manila Araneta in Cubao, Quezon City, Mercure Manila Ortigas, and Joy Nostalg Manila also at the Ortigas business district. (See, previous story in the BusinessMirror, January 9, 2019.)
“We at the DOT are looking forward for Farm Tourism to serve as a catalyst for greater sustainability,” said Romulo-Puyat. “We know that we can now pursue it properly, guided by the IRR [Implementing Rules and Regulations]. Farm Tourism holds the promise of food sufficiency and additional income for our tourism stakeholders, including farmers, farm workers and fisherfolk. After all, gainful employment, enhanced productivity and sustainable livelihoods are what tourism is really all about,” she said.
“Farm Tourism capitalizes on two of our competitive advantages: agriculture, as 41.7 percent of the total land area in the country is devoted to farming [as of 2016 according to the World Bank], employing 23.5 percent of the Filipino workforce [as of July 2019], and the world-renowned Filipino brand of hospitality that brought in 7.1 million foreign visitors to the country [in 2018],” she stressed.
Indeed, if the agriculture expert turned tourism marketer pulls this off seamlessly, in time she—and the sectors she serves—will see a truly bountiful harvest, farm-wise and goodwill-wise.
