Tourism Secretary Wanda Corazon Tulfo-Teo has proposed a Mindanao tourism agenda to draw more tourists to the island.
Teo said the Tourism Regional Office in Mindanao would push for the Samal-Davao City bridge project to address the growing number of island visitors.
Davao City, according to latest data from Tourism Region XI, registered 1.7 million arrivals in 2015, comprising of 1.56 million domestic travelers and 128,333 foreign visitors.
Migrant Filipino workers, meanwhile, numbered 14,699. A total of 161,339 visitors were recorded in August last year, with 12,142 foreign arrivals and 147,207 local visitors.
Teo added the department wanted to make the current international attention on Davao a major turning point for Mindanao tourism.
“The interest in Davao is really high these days, as people want to see how then Mayor Rodrigo Duterte has managed the city,” said Tourism Mindanao officer-in-charge Eden Josephine David, referring to the increased visitor arrivals in Davao City at the start of the Duterte presidency.
David added the department was banking on the new administration’s plan to implement the Mindanao logistics infrastructure network as part of its revitalized infrastructure spending to help address the connectivity and infrastructure gap of the region.
Marco Polo Davao’s Dottie Viajar Wurgler-Cronin asaid she was confident “Davao and the entire Mindanao region would be given more attention now that we have a tourism secretary from the region.”
She said she expected a “better understanding of what we have and can offer from this region,” the first Filipinao general manager of Marco Polo Davao said of Teo’s leadership.
Container handling capacity will be 175,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit per year with a nine hectare terminal area incorporating a yard area of six hectares. Depth alongside the quay will be 12m at all times, offering the ability to serve Panamax, Handymax and Wafmax vessels.
Based on demand, ICTSI also has the option to immediately implement a Phase Two development providing an additional 350m of quay line and supporting yard area.
ICTSI earlier reported a net income of $92.6 million in January to June, lower than $105.7 million in the same period last year.
ICTSI attributed the drop in net income to unfavorable volume mix, lower non-containerized and storage revenues, lower capitalized borrowing costs and higher depreciation and amortization expenses related to Tecplata S.A., the company’s new terminal in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Gross revenues from port operations reached $550.8 million in the first half, compared with $552.1 million reported in the same period last year.
ICTSI handled consolidated volume of 4,264,633 twenty-foot equivalent units in the first six months, up 10 percent from 3,888,130 TEUs handled in the same period in 2015.