STAY home. Dream. Wake up in the Philippines.
This is the theme of the new social-media ad of the Department of Tourism (DOT), which was softly launched over the weekend on social-media channels to keep the Philippines top of mind among foreign tourists despite the ongoing coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic.
In an interview with the BusinessMirror, DOT’s Assistant Secretary for Branding and Marketing Communications Howard Lance A. Uyking said the ad is available on the agency’s social- media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the like, “so it’s free. Given the limited budget, we want to do a full launch once we have the exact date/s of the lifting of the international travel restrictions.”
To introduce the new spot, the DOT wrote on its Twitter account on Saturday: “To all our foreign friends, Beyond the Philippines’s breathtaking beaches, you can discover a wide range of adventures, getaways, and cultures. Until we can travel again, stay at home, dream, and #WakeUpInPH: https://philippines.travel/wakeupinph #TogetherInTravel #TravelFromHome.” The WakeUp link brings the visitor to a microsite that shows “wake up” videos for Central Visayas, the Zamboanga Peninsula, the Cordillera Administrative Region, and the Bicol region.
At the beginning of the new 60-second ad, images are flashed of people with their eyes closed, resting or sleeping, as if dreaming of floating in waters off a beach, trekking by a cave, scuba diving with fish swimming about, then lazily waking up to find themselves in destinations of the country. Among the featured destinations include the hills of Batanes, Mayon Volcano, Siargao, El Nido, the Banaue Rice Terraces, among others, as the tourists find themselves engaged in local activities like para-sailing, driving AVRs, eating in a fiesta, cycling in Vigan, among others.
The spot then ends with people closing their eyes again with words superimposed: “Until we can travel again, stay home, dream, and wake up in the Philippines.”
Uyking added the footages for the ad came from the shoots last year of DOT’s advertising agency, BBDO Guerrero, “but we weren’t able to do a full launch due to Covid-19.” Last year, the DOT allotted P1.1 billion to create ads and place them in media channels to promote the Philippines for the fourth quarter until early 2020. (See, “DOT allots P600M to develop, place ads targetting ‘opportunity markets,” in the BusinessMirror, July 30, 2019.)
Under the government’s National Tourism Development Plan for 2016-2022, the DOT was targeting about 9.2 million foreign tourists to arrive in the Philippines this year, after having reached 8.26 million inbound arrivals in 2019.
According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), international tourist arrivals are projected to plunge by 20 percent to 30 percent and “could translate into a decline in international tourism receipts (exports) of between $300 billion to $450 billion, almost one-third of the $1.5 trillion generated in 2019. Taking into account past market trends, this would mean that between five and seven years’ worth of growth will be lost to Covid-19.”
The global tourism group noted that in 2009, on the back of the global economic crisis, international tourist arrivals declined by 4 percent, while the SARS outbreak led to a decline of just 0.4 percent in 2003.
In its report published on April 17, the UNWTO said, “96 percent of all worldwide destinations have introduced travel restrictions, in response to the pandemic. Around 90 destinations have completely or partially closed their borders to tourists, while a further 44 are closed to certain tourists depending on country of origin.”
Image credits: Image captured from DOT ad