Summer capital drafting tourism survival plan

BAGUIO CITY—The 1990 earthquake, a meningococcemia outbreak and Typhoon “Pepeng” in 2009 almost snatched away the charm this city has over local tourists.

But as business from tourism continues to slide, the summer capital’s hotel and restaurant sector has come up with a survival plan to help investors recoup losses when an unexpected crisis occurs.

The plan includes improving access roads and parks and hotel accommodations, and investing in new marketing and advertising schemes, according to Anthony de Leon, chair of  Hotel and Restaurant Association of Baguio (HRAB).

He said businessmen had realized that they did not have any “recovery plan” after meningococcemia struck or contingency plans after Pepeng caused landslides that blocked all three routes to Baguio and isolated the city.

“When the 2009 Advertising Congress pulled out [due to the Pepeng-triggered landslides], we experienced potential revenue losses because we spent millions of pesos preparing for the congress, yet the businessmen were unprepared with a backup plan,” he said.

The heart of the recovery plan would be the improvement of Burnham Park because it remains the most popular tourist haunt in the city, said Heiner Maulbecker, an HRAB board director.

“We cannot compete with Boracay, but we can show people our nature and culture [in the mountain region]. Kids do not want to go to Baguio because it is boring. These [insights] are the things that we should listen to,” Maulbecker said.

Baguio is still a preference for hosting conferences and seminars, he said.

From January to March, the Department of Tourism reported that 135,566 tourists visited the city, a 33-percent drop from the 201,234 tourists in the same period in 2010.

The DOT Cordillera office attributed the decline to the city’s “image problems”—traffic jams, limited parking spaces, uncollected street garbage, and criminality.

“We are aware of the decline [in Baguio tourism] but people cannot blame government. The competition has become stiffer. We should come up with a master plan for the next five years,” De Leon said.