Hospitable Travel Culture and Unparalleled Travel Experience…All in the Philippines--An interview with Mr. Joseph H. Durano, Secretary of the Philippine Tourism Department

“As far as the Philippines is concerned, looking from the point of view of what value the Philippines has to offer, in terms of experience, it’s almost infinite. Even in the Philippines, your experience is not the same everywhere.”

The nearest tropical country to China is the Philippines. So if Chinese people want to have tropical feelings, I think Philippines is a very good choice,” the Philippine Secretary of Tourism Mr. Joseph H. Durano said.

“If you go further south, it becomes more tropical, because you get closer to North Asia. So in fact the temperature, the terrain the Philippines goes from subtropical to tropical. It is this part of the country from here, up to northern Luzon, that is subtropical. But as you go further south, to Palawan, Coron it becomes tropical. This is a great place for scuba diving.”

The Philippines, an archipelago of 7,107 islands, is like a beautifully growing tropical girl. She is emanating her unparallel charm and booming development momentum.

Besides its delightful and appealing scenery, what one can feel the most in the Philippines is the nice smile of the Philippines. As Richard M. P. Masselin, General Manager of Manila-based Pan Pacific Hotel & Resorts, told CBF, the smile of the Filipinos is natural and is from their heart which one seldom find in other Southeast Asian countries. It is said that even the sharks of the Philippines is very friendly; they often swim around the scuba divers naughtily playing with them. Never an incident of sharks hurting people was reported.

The historical origin of the hospitable travel culture

What makes the travel experience and travel culture of the Philippines so unique? “If you look at the history of the Philippines, we were a nation that hosted foreign powers for a long time. The Philippines was under Spain for close to 400 years, we were under the Americans for close to 50 years, we were under the Japanese for two decades. So we are a nation that has developed this capacity to be hospitable, to host foreign nationals. Because of our culture, because of our history, we’re good at playing host to foreign nationals. We’re also a very adaptable culture. For this reason, when people come to the Philippines, it often feels like home. It’s not home, but it feels like home. This is a comment I always get from all kinds of nationalities.” Mr. Durano explained.

He added that especially for the Chinese people, there is a very big Pilipino-Chinese community in the Philippines. In fact, many Chinese traditions have become part of the Philippine traditions. Because it’s a Catholic country, they do celebrate Christmas, they celebrate the Christian New Year. But because there is a very big Chinese community, the Filipinos celebrate the Lunar New Year as well. It’s a big celebration, just as big as their Christian New Year.

As far as the origin of the Filipinos with the Chinese, Mr. Durano said if you look at the history of the Philippines, its first trading partners were the Chinese, traders from Mainland China. Today you can still see evidence of this in the Philippine culture. “Spain wasn’t the first foreign power to discover the Philippines. Even before Spain came, we were already trading with Chinese people.” Mr. Durano told CBF.

The opportunities against the background of economic crisis

China is the fastest growing market for the Philippines. Statistics from the Philippine Department of Tourism showed that in 2007 the number of South Korean tourists to the Philippines was 653,300, making South Korea the largest tourist exporter to the Philippines, while China ranked fourth. Meanwhile the figures also revealed that the growth rate of the South Korean market is slowing, whereas the Chinese market is growing steadily.

2007 was a year when the Philippine tourism industry was growing rapidly with both the number of tourists hosted and the value of tourist consumption reaching an unprecedented high. According to figures provided by the Philippine Department of Tourism, in 2007 the number of tourists to the Philippines exceeded 3 million for the first time, hitting 3.09 million; the value of tourist consumption also increased by 40.99% over a year ago, reaching US$4.885 billion.

Just at this time, the global financial crisis happened, severely impacting on the world economy. Against this background, can the Philippine tourism industry maintain its growth momentum? Mr. Durano said, now what’s happening in the global marketplace is a downturn, but it’s not a disappearance, there will still be plenty of people traveling, just not as many in the last four years.

“The growth cycle of Philippine tourism is really only at the beginning stage. Because our growth cycle is still in the beginning, we are still getting between 3 million to 3.5 million tourists. It is still easier, even with the smaller marketplace, to sustain such a number. For example, for the past five years, the average growth rate of arrivals to the country was 10.5%. And if you look at the total marketplace, let’s say Asia Pacific just coming from China, from India, from Korea, all of this high growth tourism markets, we’re just getting a very small percentage. So even if the markets contract by 10%, there’s still a lot of room for us to grab a bigger share in this market. So for me, I still see a big even with this global tourism downturn, because of the position for the Philippines, I still see plenty of opportunity for us.”

Unparalleled value-based travel experience

So what makes the Philippines’ special tourism position compared with other Southeast Asian countries? Mr. Durano said the Filipinos really pride themselves in diversity.

“One of the natural responses of a market to a downturn is that the market becomes more value-conscious. People will look for more value on whatever they’re purchasing, whether it’s a car, or a house, whatever. As far as travel is concerned, the value is experience. What experience will I get for this amount of money. But as far as the Philippines is concerned, looking from the point of view of what value the Philippines has to offer, in terms of experience, it’s almost infinite. You travel from one island to the other and get a different experience on each island. In terms of scuba diving, you go from one dive site to another and get different experiences. So even in the Philippines, your experience is not the same everywhere. In other words, the Philippines provides so much value because of the diverse and unique travel experience you can have here.”

Although advantageous natural conditions enable the Philippines to provide much more value than other places, there are other factors which will affect the overall satisfaction of tourists. In this respect, the Philippine Government has done a lot to improve the personal experience of average tourists.

“You know, it’s never easy. Because as a traveler, your level of comfort the moment you arrive in a particular place is being able to communicate. The most basic level of any person traveling is that you are able to communicate your concerns. And for the Philippines, one of the things that we are aggressively doing is to equip our industry players, the front-liners, to be able to communicate to the markets we have. Mainland Chinese will be one of the most important markets. Five years ago, this market wasn’t even in our top 10, but today it’s number 4. So in a very short period of time it has become so important to us. Communication comes first. So we have to make sure that all the major hotels and resorts will have the ability to communicate in Mandarin.”

Mr. Durano continued that the second level of comfort for any traveler is food. So that’s another way that they are continuously equipping themselves. Based on past experience, they found out that travelers from Mainland China don’t want to eat food being cooked in coconut oil. And because the Philippines is a coconut-growing country, most of their oil is coconut-based. But now, they are making sure that Chinese restaurants don’t use coconut oil.

“Improvement is a continuous process. We’re always looking to provide comfort to our target market.” Mr. Durano emphasized.

Great attention is being made to environment protection

The rapid development of Philippine tourism also makes the environmentalists concern about, for example, whether the tourism-generated airplane flights will trigger climate changes and whether the increase in the number of scuba divers will cause irretrievable destructions to the oceanic ecology.

As for climate changes, Mr. Durano said, as an archipelago, if the scientists are correct, with global warming, there will be rising sea levels. And with rising sea levels, as an archipelago, the Philippines will be strongly affected. So for this reason, the Philippine President just created a body, the anti-climate change task force. She considers it so important that the President herself appointed herself chairman of the task force.

“Meanwhile, one we understand that as far as nature-based tourism is concerned, whether underwater, for example, or bird-watching in the forest, there will always be a limit, to make sure that development will not overwhelm the natural wealth of the area. What we are doing is to make sure that we balance both preservation and conservation with development, the practical approach is to spread tourism activity around as many places in the country as possible, to make sure there is no one single scuba-diving area, for example, that has to absorb all the scuba divers. Because as soon as you bring a human being into an area, it affects the ecology. What’s important is to limit it. So what we do is we spread it to as many areas as possible. Second, we are working with the host communities of these areas. These scuba-diving areas will be operated as marine sanctuaries, and for each sanctuary, we will determine the maximum number of scuba-divers that will be allowed, by regulating the dive fees. So for instance, in Palawan and Coron, we will make the diving fees more expensive than in other less-sensitive areas, let’s say like Bohol, which can accommodate more scuba divers.”

As for how to attract more scuba divers from China, Mr. Durano said the Philippines has already done a lot of trade promotions in China. “It’s a matter of finding the right partners. We are very much open and willing to enter into more trade promotions with the right partners, whether it’s a tour operator, or travel media, or a travel agency. We want to come with special scuba diving packages for China. This is one of our most important tasks, finding the right partners. After that, the next step is easy.” he said.

Editor’s Information

Philippines is accessible from Shanghai via daily regular flights to capital city of Manila on Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific. There are also direct regular chartered flights from Shanghai to Cebu on China Eastern Air, and Hangzhou to Manila on Philippine Airlines, both on twice-weekly schedule.