Road diggings do not spoil Baguio tourism

BAGUIO CITY—The heavy traffic jams, caused by 16 of 44 road projects that were started last month, have not spoiled tourism in Baguio, although the summer capital has experienced a slight visitor slowdown, the city tourism office said.

Projects that paved national roads surrounding downtown Baguio caught the city government off guard and led to cancellations of hotel room bookings during Holy Week, said Benedicto Alhambra, city tourism officer.

But throughout April, Baguio hosted tourists, most of them arriving Friday to Sunday to experience the city’s cooler temperatures as extreme summer heat plagued the lowlands, Alhambra said.

“At best, the weekend tourists and the weekly bus tours will make up for the slump during Holy Week and keep our numbers steady, but we do not expect to improve our arrival figures this summer,” Alhambra said.

April is part of Baguio’s peak tourist season, according to records. In April 2013, for example, the city hosted 83,161 tourists who checked into the city’s hotels and inns, higher than February, when the city recorded 78,929 tourists during the crowd-drawing Baguio Flower Festival street-dancing parades. These figures did not include visitors who stayed in unregistered transient homes and those who chose to camp out in the city’s parks.

Baguio’s top month for visitors, however, is still December. In 2013, 107,731 tourists were recorded to have checked into the city’s hotels and inns.

The tourism office has not yet completed its April report, but Romeo Concio, city general services officer, observed an increase in the daily garbage volume at the start of summer, which he attributed to tourists. The increase involved discarded food packaging and containers and plastic bags, he said.

Supt. Evelio Degay, chief of the city’s traffic police division, said some of the road projects had been completed ahead of time by contractors of the Baguio City district engineering office, at the request of the city government.

But new excavations have also started, which made traffic rerouting a challenge, he said.

“Some roads we intended as alternative roads are being dug up for repaving ahead of the opening of newly paved roads, which need more time for the concrete to be properly cured,” Degay said.

The road excavations are this year’s Department of Public Works and Highways project allocation for Baguio, to fulfill a government mandate to pave all national roads in the country before President Aquino ends his term in 2016.

The shorter travel time provided by the Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway is also making short visits to Baguio possible for Metro Manila-based families, Alhambra said. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon