Boracay: A Destination of Hope for the Philippines

Saturday, 21 January 2012 00:00

Written by Aaron Benedict De Leon

The travel website www.TripAdvisor.com’s Travelers’ Choice 2011 recently named Boracay as the best beach in Asia and the second best beach in the world, alongside the Providenciales in Turks and Caicos Islands, the Palm/Eagle Beach in Aruba Island and Negril in Jamaica.

Indeed, our Boracay Islands deserves this feat, but this solely just cannot be attributed to the beautiful sceneries which can explored within the islands, but this can be mostly credited to the wonderful people of our Boracay Islands and the kind of hospitality and friendliness our folks there display to both our local and foreign visitors.

This could be the ray of light that will hopefully outshadow the mentality of some of our locals that this country isn’t necessarily the best place to live, proof of which, is the growing number of Filipinos migrating to other countries, whether those be for economic or environmental reasons.

For many reasons, our own people, have become, in a way, antagonists to our very own tourism strategy in selling the country as tourism hub. This should not be, and we must leverage on our creativity and dynamism, both in policy and in strategy, to make our country and our places as a top tourism destination for both our locals and foreigners.

I fondly remember during my stint as spokesperson and policy writer for a Presidential candidate, we emphasized on a tourism strategy with a cultural backbone, one that capitalizes on the vividness of the history and heritage of the inhabitants of a certain tourist destination. This makes the inhabitants part and parcel of the tourism strategy, making the overall tourism concept a consensus and collaboration between government and citizens. This could be a good start towards optimizing our tourism potential.

Coupled with that, I believe that it is also important to put a universal touch to each destination so that the external market will not totally be alienated by a purely cultural tourism concept.

In short, a tourism strategy must be hybrid- with a local and international touch.

These are almost all present in the tourism strategy of Boracay. And as evidence has it, both locals and foreigners are attracted by this kind of strategy, as reflected in the number of flights being booked en route to Boracay and the sales returns of businesses there.

True, there may be other islands which can be claimed to be more attractive to the eyes than Boracay, but what sets Boracay apart is that it is being properly marketed and its potential is being maximized, thus, everybody becomes economically a winner.

Just like other local government units in Palawan and Cebu, Boracay’s local government has also delivered in terms of providing a good facility for investment and tourism.

In this instance, you have a mixture of almost everything in making a city alive- both economically and socially. You have a competent local government, a participative citizenry and cooperative business enterprises- overall, a market that fosters functional competition.

And if Boracay was able to it, I’m pretty sure other local tourist destinations can do it, our country’s stakeholders can also emulate it.

There isn’t too much drama in selling Boracay, unlike what’s going on in the Impeachment trial in the Senate. Boracay sells because of the “Boracay Experience”- the testimonials of the visitors about their experience and interaction with the place and its people. It doesn’t attempt to hard sell, because the work speaks for itself. This could be a good model too for our public officials. In government, officials don’t have to try too hard via overkill P.R ads, which are downright cheap and corny, to assure themselves of re-election. Quality performance and efficient service will merit incumbent and aspiring politicians’ votes, and succeedingly, will get them elected.

So what am I trying to arrive at?

The accolade that Boracay recently got is testament not only to the beauty of its sceneries, but also to the work everybody put in to make it such a beautiful experience for everyone. You have people, groups, institutions working together to make their place something worth visiting, worth investing in, worth staying and coming back to.

If only people start loving the country more, and hating each other less, then we have all the talent and skill to make our country a place of destination, so that we don’t have to depend heavily on tourism slogans or campaigns to cover up for what we know is not right.

At the end of the day, the best tourism strategy and the best strategy for the country is to get everybody’s hand in our future, give each one responsibility and make everyone part of the success of this collective endeavor.

Congratulations Boracay! You’ve made us proud!