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Thursday, August 03, 2006
CAT-G expects more Japanese visitors for Asean summit
The demand for tour guides is expected to increase as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit draws closer, an official of the Cebu Association of Tour Guides (CAT-G) said.
CAT-G president Rafael Tura said “a great number” of arrivals in relation to the Asean summit in December will be Japanese nationals.
In preparation for the summit, Japanese-speaking tour guides who are members of CAT-G will be scheduled for an upgrading seminar in the next months.
“The areas we need to upgrade are information, language proficiency and personality,” said Janet Panis, a CAT-G member.
Tura said August and September are usually “peak months” when the demand for Japanese tour guides is higher.
The organization has worked on developing some members to address Korean tourists.
But Tura said that while CAT-G now has a Korean-speaking tour guide, Korean travel agencies “do not utilize them.”
This is the reason that despite the influx of Korean visitors in the province, few, if not none, of CAT-G members have tapped the market.
Optimistic
The number of Korean visitors in Cebu has reached 49,852 in the first four months of this year, compared to 36,924 of the same period last year, according to the Department of Tourism (DOT) 7.
CAT-G is optimistic their tour guiding services are still in great demand by other Korean, Japanese, German, and Italian visitors.
Tura said these foreign tourists still show great interests in every destination CAT-G members bring them.
“They make us stop to take a picture of every fruit bearing tree they find like mango, tamarind, and even papaya,” he said.
He added that most of Asian foreigners frequent city tours, island picnic and golf tours while the Europeans prefer countryside and heritage tours.
Tura, along with Alfredo Taghoy, chairman for Cebu Tour Guides Multi-purpose Cooperative and Steve Retuya, a director of CAT-G board, told Sun.Star Cebu of their hopes of being accredited as a nongovernment organization (NGO) before the end of the year.
“Once we are (an) NGO, we can fulfill our objectives of fostering relationship between tour guides, the promotion of tourism in our localities, upgrade and train tour guides to improve the quality of service to our guests and improve the image of tour guides,” Retuya said.
CAT-G has around 130 members who are licensed by the Cebu City Government and accredited by DOT 7.
Around 85 percent of its members are Japanese-speaking and 15 percent speaks Chinese, Spanish and Italian. (MMM)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (August 3, 2006 issue)
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