I have read from the Internet that Mastercard created the Global Destinations City Index which is a list of cities throughout the world most visited by tourists. This list is accordingly compiled from studies on overnight visitor arrivals and cross-border spending. Three cities in the ASEAN are in the top ten namely Bangkok, ranked number 1, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur, numbers 5 and 6, respectively. Sadly, Cebu City is not in the list. At least, not yet until Honorable Mayor Michael Rama achieves his Singapore-like dream for our city.
I suppose that among the several factors upon which this list is prepared should be the acknowledgement by tourists of the hospitality of the people and the availability of hotel and other living accommodations in the cities. On one hand, the hospitable nature of the Cebuano is known far and wide. Without fear of contradiction, I claim that we are a friendly community as we welcome visitors with heartwarming smiles. So, we should rate high in the first of the two factors I have mentioned above. On the other hand, tourists will not visit places where they have a hard time finding where to stay or where they discover that the hotels they have chosen to check in are more concerned with raking in money instead of making visitors feel welcome. This is an area of concern.
Despite living in pronounced modesty, we, too, my family too, have been travelers ourselves. In the few foreign lands that I visited and from my own personal experience, using reasonable norms, I rate the totality of hotel accommodations from service to facilities. I also engage in or host some socials in our city either in my humble home or in high-end hotels and restaurants. In fact, during the last three weeks, my modest family had two functions in two separate sites of an identified 4-star hotel. These are (1.) the Seda Ayala Center at the Cebu Business Park, where my granddaughter had her debut and (2.) the Seda Central Block at the I.T. Park in Barangay Apas where we celebrated our Golden Wedding Anniversary.
In the debut event, which we timed during my granddaughter Coco’s school break at De La Salle, we invited only few of her close friends and some relatives from Manila and Mindanao. Still my son Averell and his lady Dr. Enen spent a fortune. The band we hired played good music to add to a very memorable and hassle-free celebration. For our golden wedding celebration, we too had visitors from Leyte and Bohol aside from those whom we invited from Canada and the US. But, unlike our wonderful experience at Seda Ayala Cebu Business Center, our golden wedding anniversary celebration met some challenges, notwithstanding the beautiful serenading done by Mayor Michael Rama. We were relieved though that former Vice President Teofisto Guingona and former Senator Ramon Magsaysay missed our affair or they could have felt the kind of embarrassment we suffered.
It was beyond reason how two branches of the high-end Seda chain of hotels could provide extremely opposite brand of service. Top management need to investigate into this. What I saw was that Seda Hotel at Ayala Cebu Business Center was thankful for our bringing business to it. We, in spite of our modesty, were treated with the kind attention royals are given. It was horribly different at Seda Central Block at I.T. Park in Barangay Apas. I do not want to go to details for the specifics are better buried in the din of oblivion but I am of a personal belief that if there is any hotel in Cebu City that people, both local tourists and foreign visitors, shall avoid checking in, it must be the Seda Central Block. Whenever I can, I will suggest to Mastercard not to include this hotel in its Global Destinations City Index as I will ask my friends not to patronize it.