Tourism means Business

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Tourism means Business

The United Nations World Tourism Organization recently reported an increase in international tourists from 25 million in 1950 to 1,186 million in 2015 and a forecast of 1.8 billion for 2030, an increase of 3.3% annually. France , the United States, Spain and China continued to top the ranks in both international arrivals and receipts.
Recently, the business of measuring success was the main topic in the recent Tourism Enterprise Forum held in the province of Negros Occidental . Mr. Ramil Basuel of the Department of Tourism, Office of Tourism Planning , Research and  Information Management together with Ms. Reda Astronomia of the Department of Tourism Region 6 were the resource speakers.

This was attended by more than fifty owners and managers of tourism enterprises such as facilities and services and attractions in tourism with main participants coming from the accommodation sector such as hotels, pension houses , resorts and other special interest facilities like museums   and local government tourism officers. An assessment was done on the knowledge of participants regarding the tourism industry and its services.

            Mr. Basuel said that 8% of the country’s gross domestic product is contributed by  tourism with  1 out of 10 persons working  in the tourism industry. It was also reported that foreign visitors have been growing at an average of 8.8% annually surpassing the 5 million mark in 2015. There were 1.34 million Koreans that came, 779,217 visitors were from the United States of America, and half a million from Japan followed by China, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, Canada, Malaysia and the United Kingdom. 

            The participants were taught how to measure the success of a tourism business such as tourist arrival data gathering and tourist receipts in form of consumption of goods and services made by foreign visitors out of foreign currency resources by following basic parameters like visitor arrivals, average length of stay and average  daily expenditure. It has been noted that  International  Average Daily Expense is $107.44  which is broken down into expenses on accommodation, food and beverage, visitor attraction, local transportation, guided tours, entertainment/recreation and shopping.

            In relation to this, the Philippine Statistics Auth
ority Region 6 recently reported  on the  2015 Regional Economic Performance of Western Visayas which  ranked 2nd and 5th among the regions with fastest growing economy and bigger  share to the national GDP accelerating at 8.3% with services as the largest contributor to region’s economic output of 57.1 %.

            There are 4 out of 10 Filipinos aged 15 and up  who travels around the country every quarter. With the figures reported by the UNWTO and the Department of Tourism, there is no doubt that there is indeed a promising business in tourism. There is a growing interest in the industry in Negros Occidental, many have applied for accreditation  from tourist transport to accommodation facilities.

            Infact, today Bacolod City is represented by City Tourism Officer Ma. Elma Gerasmo with Tour Operators Pushpa Tan and Yvette Millanes in Singapore, Malaysia and Bangkok for the 2016 Western Visayas Tourism Business Mission together with other tourism stakeholders and tourism officers with Director Helen Catalbas with the main goal to increase tourist arrivals and creating more jobs, and increase in tourist receipts.

            With a new set of tourism enterprise practitioners gaining knowledge through the Tourism Enterprise Forum, we have set the 2017 tourist arrival target at 20%, and this is indeed attainable with the cooperation of our tourism stakeholders.




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