Tourism should be a daily affair

The Certified Public Accountants in the Visayas and Mindanao will be holding their 3rd PICPA VisMin International Conference today and tomorrow in London, England. Fortunately, as part of the advance party, I had the opportunity to join the team in exploring London, the Town of Stratford-upon-Avon and the County Town of Warwick last week.

London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. Its history stretched back to the Roman times. Its most notable landmark is the Buckingham Palace, the British monarchy’s official residence. The Buckingham Palace, though the most imposing of all, is just one of the many palaces in London. The other being the Kensington Palace where newly-wed Prince Harry and Megan now reside.

While London had several palaces, the Warwick Castle also stands prominently in the County Town of Warwick of Warwickshire, England. It is a medieval castle originally built by William the Conqueror in 1068.

The Town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on the other hand is a medieval market town in England’s West Midlands.  While there are no palaces in this town, it is widely known as the 16th-century birthplace of William Shakespeare, the English writer who was so famous for his sonnets and plays such as “Romeo and Juliet” and “Hamlet.”

All these places are packed with tourists. From the way it looked, all continents were represented. For one, without any activity at all, the Buckingham Palace, the Kensington Palace and the Warwick Castle are already visited by hundreds of tourists each day of the week. Impressively, however, just the mere changing of the guards at the Buckingham Palace draws thousands each time they do it.  Reportedly, while they change guards on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in fall, winter and spring, they do it daily during summer. Obviously, this simple activity alone attracts millions of tourists each year all over the world.

Interestingly, without any reference to royalty, Stratford-upon-Avon is also drawing thousands of tourists on weekends and holidays and hundreds on ordinary days. The main attraction, William Shakespeare.

These and several other interesting spots perpetually made the United Kingdom among the world’s top performers in the travel and tourism surveys. Specifically, among the World’s top 5 performers.

The fact really is, even if some countries in the world are in chaos, globally, tourism has continued to flourish. The survey published by the World Economic Forum (The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2017) confirms this.  The 2017 survey clearly showed that “for the sixth consecutive year, industry growth outperforms that of the global economy, showcasing the industry’s resilience in the face of global geopolitical uncertainty and economic volatility.” More importantly, the report underscored the fact that “the industry contributed US$7.6 trillion to the global economy (10.2% of global GDP) and generated 292 million jobs (1 in 10 jobs on the planet) in 2016.”

Sadly, however, while other countries are able to reap the benefits of this rosy development, we went down in the 2017 survey by five notches. From no. 74 in 2015, we are now ranked no. 79.

Undeniably, we’ve promoted our tourism industry to the hilt. Its hype has always been great and undoubtedly expensive. In Cebu, however, the question is, what are we promoting? Sinulog? Then, the truth is, it gives us a week bounty. Considering that a year has fifty two weeks, it simply means, a week of abundance and fifty one weeks of scarcity.

Clearly, therefore, an annual event like Sinulog is not enough. So that some countries that are solely dependent on festival-related tourism had to do other things. For sustainability reasons, these countries have organized trade expos in between their festivals to have constant influx of opportunity-seeking travelers and leisure lovers alike.

Moreover, Cebu might take pride of its long stretches of beaches as if we are the only island that has it. While it’s noteworthy, we must not forget that Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand have longer, cleaner and more serene beaches too. Yet, despite their natural gifts, they’ve developed theme parks, amusement parks and other places of interest. Why can’t we do the same through private sector initiatives by giving them local tax breaks or incentives? The LGUs, on the other hand, must make sure that these places of interest are reachable by providing the necessary infrastructure. Then, jointly, all tourism players (LGUs included) must make a collective effort in promoting the island. The tour and travel operators, businessmen as they are, will certainly package tours if the products are saleable and reachable.

So that, through initiatives like these, tourism in Cebu will be a daily affair, not a yearly event.