“To be fair, tourist promotion should not just be the sole responsibility of the DOT but a country effort with every agency of government contributing”
In spite of the Love the Philippines media debacle, Department of Tourism Secretary Maria Esperanza Christina Frasco gets to keep her job.
This was apparently due to the decisive manner the DOT Secretary canceled its contract with the DDB Group responsible for the slogan fiasco.
It appears, however, that the ordeal has taken its toll on her because she filed a leave of absence to go for a much needed family vacation.
The past two weeks has certainly been anything but good to the DOT and Secretary Frasco.
But we have to give it to those social media sleuths who exposed the charade about the fake video footages immediately after the launch of the new slogan campaign.
Had it not been for them, it would have been a lot more damaging to the reputation of the DOT and the country.
The obvious lesson from this sordid affair is that, next time around, the DOT should not just leave the development of the entire project to the proponent without closely supervising it.
But for reasons only known to the DOT, it seems the agency is sticking by its guns and will continue with the new slogan regardless of the backlash generated by the embarrassing media disaster.
This will be the third slogan in as many years following WOW Philippines of the Arroyo administration and More Fun in the Philippines of the Noynoy Aquino administration.
Question is, why is the DOT so fixated on slogans instead of focusing on more substantive issues like making our tourist facilities competitive and transforming our airports and ports to become truly gateways with international standards so that we can attract more foreign visitors?
The reason why our tourist numbers are low is not because of our tourist slogans.
It has more to do with poor tourism infrastructure which needs improvement.
No amount of sloganeering will therefore do the trick if the product being sold is not up to standards.
We are getting our priorities wrong and our tourist numbers prove it.
The highest number of foreign visitors that we had was before the pandemic when we reached something like 8M tourists.
In 2022 when we started to loosen travel restrictions, we had about 2M tourist arrivals.
For the first six months of this year, about 2.5M tourists have entered the country and if that number will remain constant or improve, we might have more than 5M visitors for the whole year.
With this number, our DOT is already very happy but this number pales in comparison with the tourist arrivals of our neighbors like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
In 2019, Thailand received 39.9 foreign visitors which was the eighth most visited country in the world.
We could not even get a fourth of that number.
Even Vietnam’s numbers are beginning to surpass ours which is a shame considering that we have been way ahead of the curve than Vietnam, now becoming a tourist powerhouse.
Instead of constantly changing slogans, the DOT should try to find out why it is easier for these other countries to attract more visitors than us although we are not lacking in tourist attractions.
In fact, we have one of the best beaches and diving sites in the world.
Yet, we are struggling to attract foreign tourists.
Could it be because of the prevailing peace and order situation in the country?
Maybe, but Thailand has also its own insurgency problem in the southern part of that country and still able to attract that many foreign visitors which is really amazing as the Thai tourism slogan is telling the whole world.
Thailand by the way unlike us has kept that slogan without ever changing it. They seem to understand the saying that one does not “fix what isn’t broke.”
To be fair, tourist promotion should not just be the sole responsibility of the DOT but a country effort with every agency of government contributing.
This means that enforcement people must ensure a peaceful and safe environment.
The DOTr must also ensure efficient, clean and functioning airports devoid of corrupt personnel that is always giving a black eye to the country’s reputation.
This includes an efficient public transport system for easy travel around the country.
We have to realize that travelers or tourist nowadays are a lot more sophisticated than in earlier times. They are not easily persuaded to go to one country simply because of an eye catching slogan.
They do a lot of research due in part to increasing travel costs.
Attracting more tourists has also a lot to do with our country’s international reputation.
We will certainly not be able to attract too many foreign visitors if these people only read bad things about our country like the number of people being killed in our drug war.
This is not to say that slogans are not helpful in promoting a product.
A good slogan can, of course, help but it must be backed up by facts on the ground.
A slogan is supposed to be a short and attention grabbing phrase that normally encapsulates the best of the product being advertised.
So, whatever we say about what tourists will see in the country when they get here, we have to make it sure that is exactly what they will get or experience.
Developing the slogan is actually the easy part.
The harder and much longer undertaking is improving the overall tourism infrastructure of the country.
And that is where the DOT should concentrate more of its effort.
