Friday, October 24, 2008 Unite to drop travel barriers, players urged By Nancy R. Cudis Sun.Star Staff Reporter
TOURISM stakeholders are urged to exert together the universal right to travel by gearing efforts toward lifting and dismantling barriers that prevent the implementation of the open skies policy and the elimination of travel visa requirements.
Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives Pablo Garcia presented this challenge in yesterday’s session of the 6th International Tourism Forum for Parliamentarians and Local Authorities at the Shangri-La’s Mactan Resort and Spa.
“Half a million international tourists are discouraged to come to the country by air due to lack of flights or access. (The Philippine Travel Agencies Association) estimated that the country will stand to lose $350 million that would have been generated by these discouraged tourists if they came here,” he said.
In a separate interview, he explained that there are no direct flights from potential tourist markets in Europe like Madrid and Rome.
He said this is caused by the country’s current air policy that is not yet liberalized and that is limited to air service agreements (ASAs) with other nations.
“Although we have existing laws supporting tourism development and we have the Department of Tourism (DOT) campaigning hard to increase tourist arrivals, we still need a clear-cut, coherent, consistent and no-nonsense air policy that does not change from time to time,” Garcia said.
He also urged governments to start looking at tourism as less than an industry and more of a ministry or advocacy to promote international understanding and world peace.
Air policy
Tourism Secretary Ace Durano agreed, saying there is a need to institutionalize the country’s air policy and not make it a case-to-case basis or bilateral negotiation with nations, as what is happening right now.
“There are many countries that we haven’t (forged) ASAs with, and yet we want to go in these countries like Poland, Czech Republic and Bulgaria because they are already ripe for Philippine tourism. So for the meantime, we are mounting and promoting chartered flights to countries that don’t have ASAs yet,” he said.
So far, the government has established ASAs with many other countries like Korea, Singapore, Japan and Australia.
Durano also said the open skies policy and travel visa policies are the same policies his office has been pursuing, but they will need the help of Congress to do it.
Open skies is an aviation principle that allows foreign airlines to operate unlimited services in another country.
Garcia also cited other concerns faced by the tourism sector, such as the impact of terrorism as well as the financial crisis.
“Some nations could suffer collateral damage due to misplaced travel advisories by Western countries that warn of areas that are proximate to the places of terrorist attacks,” he said.
Durano cited France as one of the countries that used to mark most of the destinations in the Philippines as restricted travel areas for its constituents.
“But we lobbied. Now, there are only very few destinations in the country, some in Mindanao, that France restricted in its travel advisories. So there is a need, too, to educate them and other nations,” he said.
