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Friday, November 29, 2002
Japanese to feature Cebu, Bohol tour sites in magazine
By Jessica B. Natad
THE Japan-Philippine Tourism Council, Cebu (JPTC) has been helping Cebu promote its tourist destinations in Japan.
According to Cebu City Marriott Hotel director of sales Albert Lafuente, a group of five Japanese, including a Japanese writer, visited Cebu last Monday to explore new tourist destinations in Central Visayas, Cebu and Bohol particularly.
He said the group, which was with a photographer, would feature the places they were able to visit during their two-day stay in the region in a magazine named Neo Show Book.
Lafuente said JPTC and the Department of Tourism-Tokyo helped facilitate the group’s visit to the region.
During an earlier tourism forum, JPTC chairman Naoto Yokohama had said Cebu and the rest of the country needs to develop new tourist attractions to lure back the Japanese, who started shying away from the country with the travel ban imposed by the Japanese government on the Philippines a month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States last year.
The Japanese market used to account for 70 percent of the Philippines’ foreign tourist arrivals.
But records of the Department of Tourism (DOT) 7 showed that the Japanese comprised 29.98 percent of the total foreign arrivals in Central Visayas from January to August this year.
Promotions
Meanwhile, the private sector-led Cebu Visitors and Convention Bureau (CVCB) will soon be dangling promotional packages for Cebu for tourists to come to the area by next year.
Founding director Berna-dette Jingco said CVCB would be formulating a restructured promotion campaign beginning next year that would benefit Cebu’s entire tourism industry.
The former campaign only benefited a few establishments in the industry, she said.
CVCB is a non-stock, non-profit organization organized by Cebu’s tourism stakeholders mainly to promote Cebu as a convention and visitors’ hub in the Philippines.
Marriot’s Lafuente, on the other hand, said the Ayala-led hotel is now actively taking part in promoting Cebu as a tourist destination.
Marriott’s occupancy rate has been averaging 68 to 70 percent since it started operations in 1998. The international hotel has 300 rooms, Lafuente said.
The Cebu City Marriott Hotel, which is managed by Marriott International, is a joint venture of Cebu Holdings Inc. and Ayala Hotels Inc.
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