MANILA, 5 March 2018: The Philippines is playing catch up in Southeast Asia’s high-stake tourism industry as officials promise bigger budgets and heavy-duty promotions.
The nation closed 2017 with 6.6 million tourist arrivals up by 11%, but just a fraction of what competitors, Thailand and Malaysia, achieved in the same year.
Now projects are unfolding that the Tourism Promotion Bureau of the Philippines calls the nation’s biggest marketing spend under a 2018 PHP1 billion budget.
“We are not beggars as far as promotional budgets are concerned, TPB’s deputy chief operating officer, Maricon Ebron, told TTR Weekly in a recent interview.
“It’s our biggest marketing budget and it will be used to launch new activities, support iconic destinations, establish festivals as national institutions, revamp websites and launch new campaigns.”
A new marketing campaign is due to be launched this week during ITB Berlin, while in April, she noted top travel bloggers from around the world will be invited for a mega fam trip programme, that will see the country’s President address the group at a gala presentation.
As for competitors motoring ahead with between 25 to 30 million tourists a year the Philippines adopts a different tack.
“We have no land borders making us entirely dependent on sea and air arrivals, so comparisons with our ASEAN neighbours, who enjoy land border travel, are not relevant,” she argued.
Although the Philippines targets 7.5 million tourists arrivals for 2018, the relevant measures are a daily tourist spend estimated at USD120 a day and a length of stay averaging 10.4 days. Around 60% are repeat visitors.
Recently, the Department of Tourism introduced its new website and one immediate benefit for tourism number crunchers was the delivery of timely news releases on performance.
It its latest update the DoT website shows the country welcomed 732,506 visits in January 2018. A few weeks earlier it released full data for 2017. In the past, the DOT’s basic tourism data was delayed between three to six months.
There are now plans to host multiple language DOT sites in English, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian and German.
South Korea is the largest supply market with 1.6 million visits in 2017, mainly travelling to Cebu and Boracay. But China is catching up with just short of 1 million visits last year and climbing at an annual rate of 43%.
Ebron talks about massive infrastructure projects that will upgrade Manlia and Clark Bay airports and attracting more airlines to connect markets to secondary destinations.
To support national promotions, film tourism has been identified to build awareness of the country’s destinations, while there is an ongoing search to identify iconic places and festivals.
TPB will identify the festivals that can be promoted by tour companies to add value to tour itineraries. The 4th Madrid Fusion Manila 2018 festival to be hosted 19 to 21 April was identified as an event that raises awareness.
“Trade shows are still important to us,” says Ebrom. “We are attending ITB Berlin this week and will launch a new campaign, but the emphasis will also be on hosting mega fam trips.”
She claimed as many as 300 to 400 travel bloggers and journalists will be hosted for the mega-fam trip this April.
Overall participation in trade shows will reduce, balanced off with more online and OTA promotions.
“There are fewer buyers, and often we are meeting the same buyers at each show. Inevitably there will be a rationalisation… we will drop some shows.”
TPB is working closely with TripAdvisor and Agoda to enhance promotions this year.
