DOMESTIC tourism is expected to surge before the end of the year, as more Filipinos hopefully deal with less Covid-19 lockdowns and spend more money on vacations.
This was the brave forecast of Cesar Cruz, president of the Philippine Tour Operators Association (Philtoa) on Monday, in a news briefing at the Subic Bay Freeport, the site of the ongoing Philippine Travel Exchange (Phitex) 2021. “In Boracay, for example, when it reopened in June, you can really see the profile of the visitors [was] across the social status. Many said, it would be difficult for them to recover because people had no more money and only the high-end [guests] would visit.” At the hotel where he stayed, for example, occupancy was 50 percent, and it caters to the middle-income market.
He observed that domestic tourists have already “embraced the challenge” of traveling during the pandemic such as the difficulty in getting their QR codes, or paying for the RT-PCR tests. “Given the mindset now of our domestic traveler, we are very optimistic that before the end of the year, depending on the restrictions, we [tourism] can already take off.”
While he could not predict when tourism will recover to pre-pandemic times, Cruz said, “If only we could bring back half of the P3-trillion tourism receipts of domestic tourism in 2019, it’s more than enough.”
Phitex is an annual event that gathers local travel trade sellers and foreign buyers in a series of business-to-business meetings. Held for the second year as a hybrid event from September 19 to 23, this time at the Acea Hotel at the Subic Bay Freeport, participants include 122 buyers from 33 countries and 156 sellers, 33 of whom are onsite and 123 online.
Projected deals
Tourism Promotions Board (TPB) Chief Operating Officer Ma. Anthonette Velasco-Allones said they are projecting revenue from the closed business deals to reach some P108 million. As of 10 a.m. on Monday, there were 1,258 approved business-to-business engagements. TPB, the marketing arm of the Department of Tourism (DOT), is the lead organizer of Phitex.
Last year’s Phitex held on Panglao Island, Bohol generated P42 million in revenue, with international buyers reaching 122 from 34 countries, and 345 local sellers.
For her part, Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) chair and administrator Wilma T. Eisma said the occupancy levels of some hotels in the freeport “are better than others” because they are operating as quarantine facilities. “It’s also very important for us to have leisure hotels because business continues, not just for tourism but there are many arriving for business meetings that will need hotel accommodation here. I won’t say we are back to the same pre-pandemic times [for leisure tourism], but things 2021 is so much better than 2020.”
There are 205 hotels and other tourism establishments currently operating in the freeport as of August, of the 254 registered prior to the pandemic, according to data from the SBMA. Tourism workers are around 8,680, but Eisma said most of the quarantine hotels’ staff will be “100-percent vaccinated by this Friday.”
According to Velasco-Allones, Phitex buyers are looking for adventures and outdoor activities. Philtoa has prepared tourism packages fitting the demand of tourists abroad, involving mostly outdoor activities such farm, nature-based, and gastronomy tourism, mainly involving land travel to several “bubbles,” such as Bulacan-Clark/Pampanga-Subic, Baguio-Mountain Province, and Ilocos region.