Wednesday, September 05, 2007 Tourism players need to link with health sector - expert
IN promoting Cebu as the health and wellness capital of the Philippines, tourism stakeholders are encouraged to diversify its tour packages.
Gottfried Hilzward, tourism value chain consultant of Small and Medium Enterprise Development for Sustainable Employment Program (Smedsep), urged tour operators to include spa trips in their packages.
He said stakeholders should also create linkages with the health sector to successfully endorse Cebu in the health and wellness industry.
“Many institutions here are capable and competent but linkages are crucial. No tour operator has ever sold a spa trip,” he said.
Smedsep is a project of the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).
In its initial value chain approach (VCA) review, Smedsep found Cebu’s potentials to be in the health and wellness sector —including medical tourism and sp— while that of Bohol and Siquijor are in eco-tourism.
Oriental Negros, on the other hand, has potentials in educational tourism.
In the wellness sector, Hilzward said spa operators need to project beyond the usual spa packages of massages and facials and offer instead medical spa treatments, meditation, sports activities and healing procedures.
“You need all unique elements put into one package and you need tour operators to help sell these packages,” he told a press interview at the Cebu City Marriott Hotel last Monday following a value chain validation to tourism stakeholders.
To capture more tourists in the wellness sector, Cebu — with its more than 200 day spas — has to either create a destination spa where hotels and resorts offer a one-stop spa package or create several establishments where one can go “health hopping” among facilities that include spas and restaurants offering healthy cuisines.
Hilzward said that in Europe, wellness activities are a “part of life” such that when people take time out to rejuvenate themselves, they spend two to three weeks doing so.
This is the type of market that stakeholders need to capitalize on apart from the beach-kind of tourists, he added.
On the other hand, Cebu’s positioning as a medical tourism hub is still in its infancy, said Hilzward.
“It has not happened yet,” he said, indicating the lack of a systematic approach in gaining access to foreign patients and a strong private sector involvement to help market the province abroad.
“Facilities and skills are, by and large there, but you need to get a professional to facilitate on how to go about the steps in developing the industry so as to avoid frustration,” Hilzward said.
This, said DTI 7 Director Aster Caberte, is the beauty of the VCA study which helps identify issues and trends of the pre-identified sub-sectors as well as recommendations from the industry stakeholders themselves.
Smedsep has tapped German experts and local stakeholders who will compose the study team that will analyze the entire tourism chain in the Visayas.
Through private sector organizations and business development service providers, Smedsep will extend technological assistance and capacity-building programs to SMEs.
Caberte said that upon completion of the project next month, the program will be implemented next year. (MMM)
