Friday, November 21, 2008 Why tourism research matters By Adrian D. Agbon Sun.Star Economic Forum, Academe Committee
WHERE did you get your data? This question was thrown at me sometime last month when I spoke about tourism from a researcher’s point of view in one of the hotels here in Metro Cebu. Being in the academe for quite sometime, I am used to the question.
As a researcher, it is very clear to me that gathering data is very vital in any research endeavor. The data I obtained—whether secondary or primary—will have to be verified, cleared and even subjected to Gigo (garbage-in/garbage-out) processes.
Why does data matter? The quality of research output largely depends on data gathered by any researcher. Making research recommendations and outlining policy implications is crucial on the part of the researcher.
I don’t claim to know everything about Philippine tourism, but the thesis I wrote a couple of years ago gave me the luxury to study the state of the tourism industry in the country from the years 1995 to 2006 from an economic point of view.
We may have witnessed an increase in the absolute number of foreign tourist arrivals at 12.6 percent, but in terms of international tourism receipts, we’re still at negative 5.8 percent. Thus, I pose the following basic questions on the demand side: Who are our foreign visitors? How much do they spend upon visit in the Philippines? Are we attracting the high income and spending tourists?
On the supply side, do we have enough facilities to host large exhibitions? Does Cebu have enough and better infrastructure, such as a modern and clean airport? Does the country have enough hotel rooms to cater to large-scale travelers? Are we competitive enough in terms of prices compared to other Asean countries? Are we educating our citizens about the potential benefits and costs of developing the tourism industry? More so, should we re-think and perhaps evaluate our existing tourism policies on how Cebu and the Philippines would be packaged as tourism destination?
Unless we do real and empirical research on these questions, we can never provide better policy options to tourism stakeholders in this country.
It is now more clear to me that there is indeed a gap between what the stakeholders believe and what many researchers based in the academe are doing. Maybe this gap is an upshot of the failure on the academe to reach out to the industry, and the industry’s lack of recognition of the importance of research in developing policies that affect not only the industry but the country’s development in general.
