CREATIVE Travel and Tour International (CTTI) officially launched a private sector- led tourism campaign called “Balik Pinas, Balik Saya” (BPBS) with the end goal of enjoining Filipinos abroad to come home and experience a more dynamic Philippines.
“We’re going to give them a brand of service, wherein they will have a ‘VIP’ treatment from the airport until the end of the program,” CTTI Managing Director Ruby Rose Rustia told reporters during the initiative’s kickoff held recently at the Resorts World Manila (RWM) in Pasay City. “We can tailor-make [the] program based on what they want, or we have a ready program.”
Balik Pinas Balik Saya originated from a business concept of addressing the usual concerns of Filipinos as regards the lack in services that could provide tour activities for them and their families while on vacation here.
“We want Balik Pinas Balik Saya to be embedded as a natural fiber and vein intertwined within each and every balikbayan’s cry, plea and aspiration, ‘Gusto kong umuwi,’” said Jose Francisco Juan Rivas, co-founder of BPBS.
He said they created a platform to provide a dedicated linkage, a personal concierge and a private travel planner for clients to maximize their planned vacation within their term leave of absence from work.
Rivas said 70 percent of Filipino repatriates cannot go home during special occasions due to conflict with scheduled leaves and contract of work.
With this in mind, the campaign offers “The Give Love Package,” which addresses the need to commemorate these events by sponsoring the travel, the experience, the celebration of family events in behalf of their loved ones based abroad.
“With this special gesture of affection coming from the balikbayan, the recipients will truly appreciate with full gratitude the acknowledgement of the family milestone or achievement. Such memorable selfless act of giving something is never forgotten and always remembered,” he said.
Together with the formal inauguration is the launching of the hybrid web site, “Sundo” VIP welcome service, point-to-point bus service, activation program here and abroad, promotional video and campaign materials, mobile thematic content, and business infrastructure, with the help and support of sponsors, hotel partners, travel and tourism associates.
“We have, therefore, assembled a complete travel and tour ecosystem and branded personalized service, all for the convenience of the balikbayan,” Rivas said.
As a headstart, CTTI is now working on the six-day program for the first batch of 1,500 Filipino-American (FilAm) senior citizens. Specifically, their itinerary will include an overnight stay in RWM, a tour of various sites in Pampanga and Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar in Bataan, and an outreach program.
This does end there. After they get reunited with their family and friends, they can avail themselves of another program to visit a choice destination like Boracay, Bohol, Cebu and Palawan, among others, for three days and two nights.
“We just plot the schedules,” Rustia said of the bundled program they created for the FilAm elderly in the fist quarter of 2019. “Then we will do a massive campaign. We’re doing activation on ground. We’re doing concerts all over the world for us to be able to reach out to our target market.”
Apart from private partners, BPBS already gained support from the government, led by House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
“Programs promoting Philippine tourism have been mostly government-led. I am happy this program is purely private sector-initiated and sponsored and that the organizer has already lined up a number of events to convince Filipinos abroad to visit the old homeland and feel the joy of meeting friends and relatives once more,” she said in a statement.
The representative of the Second District of Pampanga is hopeful other corporations can also help the government in promoting tourism to Filipinos abroad and other nationalities.
Elated by the inclusion of her province in the tour program for the Fil-Am senior citizens next year, Pampanga Gov. Lilia G. Pineda lauded this campaign given its benefits to the local tourism industry.
“In launching of the Balik Pinas Balik Saya campaign, Pampanga is poised to become not just the new hub and growth area after Manila, Cebu and Davao but the next top choice of destination by both the Filipino tourists and also the foreign tourists, apart from Koreans, who have made Clark their home away from home,” she said in a statement.
As a show of readiness for the expected influx of repatriating Filipinos in Pampanga, she noted that Clark International Airport now serves 170 and 296 weekly international and domestic flights, respectively.
“Philippine tourism is growing. And with the Department of Tourism’s target of 5 million tourist arrivals this year, we Filipinos are certainly in for better and more robust business in this industry,” Pineda said.