THE Department of Tourism (DOT) moved on Wednesday to revoke the accreditation of a hotel on Boracay Island, which accommodated 24 outsiders, one of whom tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
In a media statement, the Boracay Inter-Agency Task Force (BIATF) decried the entry of a group of travelers to Boracay last June 12 that stayed up to June 14 , when the island was not officially open for tourism.
The statement said the resort housed the group days before the official reopening of the island set by the BIATF on June 16. (See, “Boracay now ready to accept tourists from Western Visayas,” in the BusinessMirror, June 11, 2020.)
“The DOT shall strictly implement rules and regulations under its mandate and shall ensure that both tourism industry players and tourists would have an enjoyable experience in an environment where trust and confidence in destinations are regained during the New Normal,” stressed Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat.
While the news statement did not name the hotel, BusinessMirror sources on the island said it was HUE Hotels and Resorts Boracay on Station 2. HUE is owned by the Manila-based Hospitality Innovators Inc., which also has a property in Puerto Princesa.
Staff and management of the resort are now under strict quarantine.
The revocation stemmed from a widely-reported incident wherein 28 employees of the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) in Iloilo traveled to Boracay on June 11 and June 12, supposedly for the visit of BIATF officials led by Environment Secretary Roy A. Cimatu, Interior Secretary Eduardo M. Año, and DOT’s Romulo Puyat. It was later found that the group actually held a birthday party.
One of the BFP employees who joined the group on June 12, according to Iloilo news reports, was supposed to have been on home quarantine for 14 days, while waiting for her Covid-19 test results. On June 13, said employee was found positive with the dreaded virus.
According to the DOT, provincial and local government officials have already been able to trace all the contacts of the 28 personnel and have advised them to undertake necessary health and safety measures.
In a press conference on the island on June 11, the BIATF commended the Aklan provincial government and Malay municipal government for mapping out stringent health and safety guidelines for tourists that ranges from digital solutions promoting contactless transactions to an detailed emergency response plan.
Before sthe press conference, the Malay government presented a Covid-19 situation to the BIATF officials, saying Boracay had “no active case” since March 5, 2020. The last reported suspect case was on May 12, 2020.
The report added, one confirmed Covid-19 case on Boracay “tested positive on March 27, 2020 and declared fully recovered last May 5, 2020 after the second repeat test.” The confirmed case was a “frontliner who attended a seminar in Manila and went to Boracay to render duty.”
According to DOT data on tourist arrivals from March 17 to May 28, 2019, Aklan, where Boracay is located, may have potentially lost some P14.23 billion in tourism receipts in the comparative period this year, due to the Covid crisis. Arrivals in the same period last year reached 546,331, of which 210,522 were foreigners.
Image credits: Tangducminh | Dreamstime.com