Our tourism woes

The Senate hearings on the habitual inefficiency bordering on consumer abuse of our big air transport carriers, varying only in degrees but with all three vexing and stressing the public, brings to focus the many woes that afflict Philippine tourism, whether foreign inbound or our own domestic travelers.

So many times have I and my family been stressed out in airports due to interminable delays and flight cancellations, going to and from Mindanao or the Visayas, and end up just bearing it with nary a grin, simply because we have no choice.

The highest visitor arrivals we had was pre-pandemic 2019, when we were still quite friendly with China.

Along with South Koreans who have made our country an escape from their dreadfully cold winters, the two countries accounted for a full third of our visitors.

When the DOT or Bureau of Immigration count the North American market as comprising 15 percent of our visitors, don’t think the “whites” flock to our shores in increased numbers.

Fil-Ams or Can-Ams who have changed citizenship and “green card” holders comprise the bulk, almost 85 percent of those visitors.

Let’s look at the real challenges the country faces as an air travel destination, the most difficult of which is that we are a multitude of islands floating in the Pacific, unlike our tourist-drenched Asean neighbors in IndoChina, which share land borders, making a visitor to say, Singapore or Thailand, accessible affordably to Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and even Laos.

All other things being equal, we are closer by air to Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and of course, China.

That also explains why Filipinos are one of their biggest markets for inbound visitors, because it only takes us four hours at most to visit these countries where the climate is cooler and the shopping is “glorious.”

Hongkong, Macau and Taiwan have become weekend destinations, while Japan and South Korea a bit longer, from five days to a week for Filipinos who have been bitten by the travel bug.

Which is why promoting our country beyond Manila, Boracay, Cebu and Palawan should be more important to us than marketing the country in say London or Paris.

No matter how we try, we will not be as successful as Thailand or the rest of the Indo-Chinese peninsula in attracting Europeans. Also, but for their ultra-rich, European tourists spend much less than Asian travelers.

Our old churches and Intramuros may be quaint enough to Japanese or Chinese tourists, enough for a brief look-see, but they cannot possibly compare to what Europe has by way of cultural and religious relics.

So, let’s be practical. Spend our marketing dollars in low-hanging fruits.

The least marginal utility with nary a marginal return, for instance, can be found in a recent country-branding misadventure, such as draping London buses with “We give the world our best” featuring our nurses toiling in foreign lands.

While yes, that was not supposed to be a tourist promotional tactic, but neither does it give our country brand a plus, because our nurses, our engineers, our skilled manpower are needed by demographically-challenged countries, and we need not advertise to send more of our OFWs.

Add to our promotional confusion is the penchant of changing our marketing slogans or taglines whenever there is a change in administration.

From Joe Aspiras’ highly successful “Where Asia wears a smile” to the sun and sea focused approaches, to Gemma Cruz-Araneta’s “Rediscover Philippines” to Dick Gordon’s “Wow Philippines!” to Mon Jimenez’ “It’s more fun…”, now DOT is reportedly coming out with a “new, improved” tagline (recall how Procter and Gamble sold and re-sold the same Tide laundry powder?).

Yet through all those 50 years or more, “Amazing Thailand” and “Malaysia, Truly Asia” have wowed 40 or more million visitors each year compared to our 1.2, then 1.8, then 4, then 5, then 6, then 8.2 millions achieved from Aspiras to Puyat, the 8.2 largely due to the “friendly” mainland Chinese now not as friendly.

To put it simply, it is a supply and demand situation, where demand far outstrips supply, and the cascading effect on us who live in the benighted homeland is that our workers desert us because we cannot give them just desserts for their toil.

I also question the wisdom of appointing tourism attaches complete with offices in foreign lands. Some of them were appointed, as usual, because of “connect,” not marketing skills.

Think out-of-the-box.

Why not just hire Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese, even Australian travel agencies, and compensate them through commissions for the tourists they bring here?

Support them with properly designed advertising and collaterals for their particular target markets. That would be more cost-effective.

One example is calculating the number of Catholics in these countries. They may be a minority in their countries, but they are more fervent in the practice of their faith than many of our ritual-focused Catolicos.

Give them a travel package that brings them, not necessarily to Intramuros, but to Ilocandia or Central and Western Visayas, bypassing chaotic NCR, where visiting churches as some sort of pilgrimage can be combined with the natural beauty of these destinations.

That is just one example.

There should be many more, if only the locally desk-bound, and foreign travel-hungry tourism bureaucrats can flex their creative energies properly, and stop buying at Selfridges or Fortnum and Mason for pasalubongs.

Then there is the woeful infrastructure, beginning with our NAIA complex of four decrepit terminals, and one main runway with a hardly useful extra runway perpendicular to the main.

Don’t even think of spending billions of pesos more trying to make the NAIA complex infrastructure better.

It will only be a matter of years before the SMC Bulacan airport with four parallel runways, two of which Ramon Ang promises to be usable within the term of the current administration.

Spend a billion or two and hire or appoint some traffic systems experts and efficient airport management personnel to focus on the problems that make arriving and departing through the air terminals a living hell.

Why can’t we give more space to immigration personnel, and sacrifice those of our useless Duty Free counters in Terminal 1 and 2 for instance? Hire a space-management interior design expert, for chrissakes.

And similarly, if we can double the salaries of policemen, why are we niggardly when it comes to overtime pay for our immigration agents manning the air terminals? Or our traffic controllers?

How do we try our best to give seamless connectivity for passengers who have to inter-connect using those four terminals?

The original NAIA 3 design called for an underground subway train in the bidding terms of reference but was corruption the cause of canceling that, leaving the passengers scrounging for their own modes of transfer transport?

Why must we continue to allow general aviation hangars in the complex, when these are patronized by the uber-wealthy and the politicians who use private planes?

Transfer these to Sangley, or wherever else, and use the added space for transfer transport and additional terminal space.

DoTr Sec. Bautista hired Glenn Chiong to run the NAIA complex and he was doing well, starting with common sense doables like abolishing the pre-check-in X-ray “security” contraptions, and other small but sensible steps.

What happened next?

The Ombudsman suspended him without hearing because of management-crimping practices of hiring, firing and re-assignment protected by our antediluvian civil service rules.

Meanwhile, coordinated scheduling of airlines can optimize the use of our brand-new Clark International Airport just as Mactan is 20 times more visitor-friendly than NAIA.

And both are privately-run.

Let us be realistic. Pouring billions, even private money, into the NAIA complex makes little sense when we know that there are the Clark, Cebu, Panglao, Palawan and others where direct flights from foreign capitals can be maximized, and likewise relieve domestic travelers from bearing with Metro-Manila’s crazy traffic only to be punished by three long hours of lining up at the NAIA.

And Bulacan is coming up, probably Sangley later.

But our tourism woes do not end with our NAIA terminal problems, nor our promotional gimmicks without focused market strategies.

So writing this article, I have to come up with a second part next week.