TOURISM IS BACK. Tourists return to Boracay as COVID restrictions are eased. JACK JARILLA/FILE PHOTO
ILOILO CITY—The provincial government of Aklan will put a cap on tourists going to Boracay when the island’s carrying capacity is reached.
In a virtual press conference on April 29 of the Boracay Inter-Agency Task Force (BIATF), Aklan Gov. Florencio Miraflores said the provincial government would stop issuing quick response (QR) codes to tourists planning to go to the island to regulate arrivals.
The QR codes, issued during the COVID-19 pandemic, are released after tourists have submitted requirements, including confirmed hotel reservations and negative swab test results or vaccination certificates.
Miraflores said they still could not set a date to implement the tourist cap.
The carrying capacity of the 1,032-hectare island is 19,215 tourists at any given time.
The average daily tourist arrivals should be around 6,405 so as not to exceed the island’s carrying capacity, according to government agencies.
The Department of Tourism earlier called the attention of the local governments of Aklan and Malay town due to a breach in the carrying capacity on April 14, with 21,252 tourists, and April 15, with 22,519 arrivals.
But Miraflores said the island did not “technically” breach the carrying capacity because the data on tourist arrivals excluded the number of visitors who left the island.
He said the average daily tourist arrivals is still below 6,000 per day.
“We agreed to have our data on tourist arrivals synchronized and coordinated (with the municipal government),” Miraflores said.
The BIATF, which has been supervising the island’s rehabilitation since May 2018, also announced that the island would be turned over to the local government units in Aklan when the term of the task force ends on June 30.
The island’s rehabilitation would still be spearheaded by national government agencies and local governments, according to Interior Undersecretary Epimaco Densing III.