Tour operators seek DOT Secretary’s help

Tour operator groups in Cebu want the Tourism Secretary to come down to Cebu and help them resolve issues which they considered a risk to the tourism industry in the region.

This developed after tour groups including the Korean Travel Agency Association in Cebu (KOTAAC) and  with South Korean Consul to Cebu, lawyer Augusto Go met last Friday to discuss the groups’ problems.

“What we can do is discuss the issues that we as individual tour and travel operators face when operating here from the moment they (tourists) land in the airport until they depart. Then we can write a letter to DOT (Department of Tourism) and ask the Secretary himself to come here and help solve these issues,” said Go.

Among the issues discussed were the fees that the tourists would pay to the Bureau of Customs officials in the airport, the difficulty of finding tour guides, and the recent Lapu-Lapu City ordinance that would require tour guides to register in the city and pay fees for them to conduct tours in the city.

The tour groups said that the Lapu-Lapu City ordinance was redundant.

Ken Choi, Cebu Korean Association president, said these issues were already affecting Korean tourists, considered Cebu’s biggest tour group contributing half of the first quarter visitors in Cebu this year.

“There are about 400,000 Koreans that visit Cebu every year. How can we expect more to come if from the moment they arrive, their experience is already bad. Fees paid to the Customs are not uniform. There is no clear fee policy,” said Choi.

Alex Lee, Kotaac president, said the Customs fees would really affect the number of Koreans visiting Cebu in the future especially that most Koreans were already “wired” and fond of blogging their experience in a place they would visit.

“Most Koreans talk about their experience on the Internet. Anything bad that they will say about Cebu will be known all over Korea because they are connected through the Internet. We cannot afford this,” said Lee.

The Lapu-Lapu City ordinance is also a major issue among the tour groups.

“This is redundant. We already have a national-issued tour guiding ID (identification card). And we have undergone tour guiding trainings conducted by DOT. And now we will have to again process another accreditation to conduct tours in Lapu-Lapu City,” said Judalyn Taghoy, president of the Cebu Tour Guides Association.

She said that in Cebu City they wouldn’t be required anymore to undergo another training and pay more fees to operate there.

“In Lapu-Lapu City through the ordinance, we are required to take the training and pay more fees so that we can operate. That is redundant and very inconvenient. Imagine if we will be required to do that in every city in Cebu,” said Taghoy.

Go said that he believed the ordinance was just another money-making strategy that would negatively impact on the tour operators in Cebu, which were fueling the tourism industry.

Cecile Saa, Cebu Association of Tour Operators president, said the group would back the move and would sign the letter asking Tourism Secretary Ramon Jimenez to come to Cebu and help resolve the groups’ issues.

“We have set an appointment with Director Montecillo (Rowena) on July 25 because she is expected to arrive tomorrow (July 24) pa from the sales mission in Malaysia,” said Saa.

As of March this year, 100,721 Koreans have visited Cebu which is almost half of the total number of foreign nationals that visited Cebu during the period at 246,399 foreign tourists.

They are followed by the Japanese group with 48,259 tourists, United States of America with 22,278, China with 12,347 and 7,178 from Australia to round of the top five tourist groups of Cebu.

Last year, Korea is the biggest group that visited Cebu with 376,524 Korean tourists recorded.

“If we want the numbers to just keep growing, we will have to resolve all these issues because even if we are already training Korean tour guides here, the tourists may not want to come because of these issues,” Choi said.

“There are currently many other destinations in the Philippines that are already competitive like Naga with their waterpark, Cebu should improve,” said Choi.