Baguio chill draws tourists, but city overwhelmed

A bonfire offers warmth and an attraction for tourists on an 11.8-degree-Celsius night on Dec. 30 at the Baguio Botanical Garden, one of the city’s most famous tour sites. RICHARD BALONGLONG/INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON

BAGUIO CITY—The city government is anticipating a backlash from Christmas holiday visitors who spent painfully long hours to get to the city because of road jams.

The city received bad reviews online and on social media, as tourists found themselves stuck in the same horrific traffic mess here that they endured on the way to the city.

Add traffic woes to the difficulty of finding a place to stay as all hotels and inns had been booked since the start of December, said Benedicto Alhambra, city tourism officer.

He said the city government would call for a meeting with agencies and the private sector to hammer out solutions before the city’s next crowd-drawing event, the annual Baguio Flower Festival in February and the Holy Week break.

“Gasoline prices were down so more people used their cars to travel to Baguio,” he said.

He said contractors also opened a portion of the Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway (TPLEx) which was designed to reduce travel time to Baguio to at least four hours when completed.

Alhambra said the city government was unprepared for the number of visitors who came here from Dec. 24 to 26, many already frustrated by crawling traffic on TPLEx, Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway and North Luzon Expressway during that period.

Given the city’s narrow roads and the absence of wide parking spaces, Baguio hotels need to provide shuttle services to encourage visitors to leave their vehicles behind, he said.

He said one solution being seen is to enforce local laws that require hotels to build parking spaces sufficient for their projected occupancy rates.

Side streets, currently used as waiting areas for public utility vehicles, would be unclogged, he added.

The number of tourists who came to the city in December was double that of the same period last year—from 107,731 in December 2013 to 215,462 in the same month this year.

Last year, according to the city tourism office, 843,473 visitors came to the city.

Alhambra said climate is still the city’s best tourist draw. On Tuesday morning, temperature fell to 11.8 degrees Celsius. On Wednesday, the temperature climbed to 13.6 degrees Celsius.

The coldest temperature in Baguio was recorded on Jan. 18, 1961, at 6.3 degrees Celsius. Vincent Cabreza and Gobleth Moulic with a report from Jhoanna Marie Buenaobra, Inquirer Northern Luzon