NO DANCING IN THE STREET In this 2019 photo, a student leads a school contingent in the street dancing competition for the Panagbenga (Baguio Flower Festival). This year, the Baguio government is scrapping the street dancing and floral float parades as it holds a scaled-down version of one of the country’s biggest festivals amid the COVID-19 pandemic. —EV ESPIRITU
BAGUIO CITY—The annual Panagbenga (Baguio Flower Festival) here will push through next month, but with limited events, to help revive local tourism, city officials said.
Mayor Benjamin Magalong said he was inclined to approve the holding of a number of activities for the festival, except for the street dancing and float parades, the highlights of the event that have been drawing crowds for more than 20 years.
Dropping the two major attractions from Panagbenga was part of the measures to avoid mass gathering and contain the spread of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Magalong said in a statement on Sunday.
He said the festival this year would retain its landscaping competition and other activities that would not draw large crowds. The Panagbenga committee also planned to put up bazaars like the Session Road in Bloom, based on initial discussions. Postponing the flower festival’s 25th edition and all summer activities in the city last year due to the pandemic had cost the local tourism industry at least P1.6 billion in lost revenue.
The prolonged shutdown of tourism-oriented businesses, such as restaurants, inns and souvenir stores, also displaced about 4,000 workers.
In September last year, the city government started the gradual opening of Baguio’s borders to tourists from the Ilocos region under the “Ridge and Reef” travel corridor or “bubble.”
Tourists had to preregister, prebook, undergo the mandatory triage, and take a real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction test as part of health screening. A month later, Magalong widened the travel bubble to include tourists from Luzon, accepting 10,000 leisure and business travelers until November.
According to him, the second phase of the recovery plan for local tourism would open Baguio to the rest of the country, which could happen this year. —KIMBERLIE QUITASOL INQ