PHOTO: A building lies in ruins following Super Typhoon Haiyan / Yolanda in the Philippines. (Photo courtesy Getty Images/Thinkstock)
A large delegation from Bohol tourism will attend the upcoming Pacific Asia Travel Association Travel Mart that will be held this Sept. 17 to 19 in Cambodia. Bohol, the normally idyllic Philippine island found itself in the epicenter of an earthquake in October of 2013 that served as a horrific prelude to Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, which hit the very next month with winds as high as 235 miles per hour. Since then, the country has been struggling to put things back to normal.
Though, there's still plenty of devastation where the earthquake and typhoon hit, the country's tourism has rebounded behind the "More Fun in the Philippines" promotional campaign. Visitor arrivals to the Philippines have grown by 11.3 percent. The majority of the most popular tourism areas were either unaffected or rebounded quickly from the disaster.
Tourism proved to be a steadying force throughout the crisis as tourism made a swift rebound. Tourism generates about 8 percent of the country's GDP and some 2.9 million jobs, about 8 percent of the total employment. The Philippine economy has been performing better than it ever has. It's been outperforming its extremely successful ASEAN neighbors with growth rates exceeding 7 percent.
Last week, H.E. Ramon R. Jimenez Jr., the Philippine secretary of tourism, who was attending the World Economic Forum in Manila (May 21 to 23), went out of his way to thank those PATA members who extended help in the six months since Yolanda hit 44 of the country's 81 provinces.
In March, the Philippine government and tourism industry stakeholders drafted a Tourism Recovery and Rebuilding Plan for the Philippines. Participants in the drafting also included the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and PATA. Each agency and organization sent a tourism expert to serve as resource person to form an international team to develop a tourism marketing recovery strategy.
Help is on the way from other quarters as well. On June 15, the Kennedy Center will host a benefit concert to raise money for the area with celebrities such as Lou Diamond Phillips, Lea Salonga and Black Eyed Peas member apl.de.ap. About 140 government officials, scientists, academics and others are expected at the Asia Europe Meeting's (ASEM) Manila Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM) from June 4 to 6. And finally, last Friday, it was announced that Pope Francis will visit the areas hit by Yolanda this coming January.
The delegation that Bohol sends to the PATA Mart can easily make the case for visiting an idyllic eco-cultural destination island with fine white beaches and terrific diving. From Bohol you can see Cebu where Ferdinand Magellan first landed in 1521. Thus old Spanish churches can be found throughout the area, including one in Cebu City that still holds fragments of the original cross that was planted in the sands by Magellan's missionaries. The province is also gifted with such natural treasures as the Chocolate Hills and the Tarsier, the smallest and oldest primate in the world.
Under the leadership of Jimenez, the Philippine Department of Tourism (DOT) recently restructured its tourism marketing apparatus under a new law that streamlines the department's efforts, increases funding for promotion and gives private industry voices a louder voice in promotions.
Jimenez was recently elected onto PATA's Executive Board. Speaking at a joint commission for both ASEAN and the UNWTO in Legaspi this week he addressed "Tourism and Climate Change" The Philippines remains a mostly undiscovered destination for Americans even though there are about 2.1 million Philippine-Americans.
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