Tourism, Medical Travel and Retirement

Since 2010, there have been significant milestones achieved through strong partnership between public-private sectors to capitalize on internal strengths of and opportunities for the Philippines’ strategic location, tropical climate, natural and cultural tourism assets, urban-based facilities, affordable cost of living for long stay and retirement, and relatively large size of its well educated primary, secondary workforce and professionals in tourism and medical sectors. The Philippines has advantages to capture a bigger slice of global and regional tourism markets.

In Southeast Asia alone, there are more than 100 Million international travelers, more than 50 percent originating from outside of the region, and the Philippines can capitalize on this market to surpass the 10 Million mark.

The Competitiveness, Inclusiveness, and Sustainability (CIS) of Philippine tourism relative to its market and product development potentials continues to be challenged by strategic weaknesses that include:

* uncompetitive tourist destinations and products;

* inadequate and poor quality of international and domestic transportation and destination infrastructure; and

* concerns on tourist safety.

In medical travel, data collection methods are characterized as diverse and inconsistent, hampering the ability to understand more deeply the market and services offered and the necessary support infrastructure requirements across development phases.

The most binding constraint for the private sector to respond to tourism growth opportunities and market dynamics is infrastructure gaps (e.g. NAIA congestion) have surfaced in meetings. Concerns on safety arising from these infrastructure gaps have surfaced in discussions with the business and consumer sectors. For tourism to have broader and deeper inclusive impacts thru longer length of stay and higher spending, it is imperative that connectivity, destination, and institutional infrastructure be adequately developed to allow tourists to move safely and conveniently to/from and across the Philippine archipelago - North to South, East to West, etc.

How can the Philippines be promoted as a tourism, medical travel, and retirement hub in South East Asia? The priority recommendations are for infrastructure, human resources, and sustainable and inclusive programs.

Four types of infrastructure need to be addressed. These are connectivity infrastructure, destination infrastructure, institutional and informational infrastructure. Here is a list of recommendations:

• Prepare the Philippine national aviation strategy relative to its strategic position in the Asia-Pacific and plan infrastructure development, particularly to address congestion at NAIA.

• Prepare the development plan for a new NAIA in order to provide good connectivity between the NCR and its southern environs that continue to serve as major domestic tourism source markets.

• Implement full development of the Clark airport terminal and aggressively position Clark as a major entry gateway to compete with other Southeast Asian airports.

• Provide funding for priority seaports for cruise tourism as identified under the DOT’s National Cruise Tourism Development Plan and with inputs from the private sector including cruise lines.

• Continue the tourism road convergence program and improve access and site visitor and conservation facilities at 94 sites in the priority clusters to support and underpin private sector investment in Source: DOTC accommodation, MICE, and leisure and entertainment products.

• Continue with market access development programs for airlines and cruise lines to promote direct flights and ship calls to secondary gateways.

• Provide funding for the enhancement of provincial airports for night landing capabilities.

• Improve the facilitation of visa issuances for crews of cruise vessels; issue long-stay visa to attract long-stay tourists and potential retirees.

• Implement the incentives program under the Tourism Act of 2009 for tourism enterprises.

In 2015, the Philippines earned US$5 billion in tourism revenues (twice the amount in 2010) from the 5.3 million international tourists who visited the country. Korea remained the number one market followed by USA, Japan, China, then Australia.

The Visayas is one of the most important tourism destinations; Cebu maintain its leading position in terms of the international airport on Mactan and its various tourism destinations; Bohol / Panglao are growing very fast into a super destination; Panay has to improve the infrastructure in and getting to Boracay; Iloilo is rising as a destination. Of course, this listing is not complete but it shows the potential of the Visayas.

Important for the tourism players in government and in the private sector to closely look at the recommendation above and implement them faster in the Visayas compared to other destinations in the Philippines.