IT HAS been almost a decade since the Tourism Act of 2009 was promulgated and while the tourism arrivals have gone up, there is still a lot to achieve in terms of capacity building for tourism governance.
Among other things, the said law calls for the creation of tourism officer positions in provinces, cities and municipalities where tourism is a significant industry. How to define significant, that is the question.
In our last meeting at the Tourism Officers Association of Pampanga, this was one of the points which some of my fellow tourism officers wanted to clarify.
There is no single metric that will precisely tell us whether tourism is significant or not, especially with the dynamic processes and shifting paradigms in viewing tourism as a phenomenon.
Most sustainable development gurus would look at tourism from three or four main considerations and study its economic, environmental, cultural, and social impact. Not necessarily in that order.
The premiere inter-government organization OECD, for example, issued guidelines on measuring tourism competitiveness through several indicators.
Under this framework, a country's tourism competitiveness can be looked at through core indicators which includes gross domestic product or GDP directly derived from tourism, inbound tourism revenue, overnight stays, cultural and creative industries, and environment and biodiversity, to name a few.
Further, supplementary tourism indicators look at quality of life, employment derived from tourism, interconnectivity and modalities, for example. It also calls for future indicators such as government appropriation in tourism and use of e-tourism services and innovations.
In the Philippines, we are almost getting there as well. For the Regional Competitiveness index which ranks Philippine towns, cities, and provinces on four areas such as government efficiency, economic dynamism, resiliency, and infrastructure, one of the indicators under the Infrastructure thematic area is the number of Department of Tourism accredited establishments in a locality.
The Department of Interior and Local Government has also stepped up through its Seal of Good Local Governance which now recognizes tourism, culture and the arts as part of the essential indicators, inherent parts of governance, which are equally important with social services, fiscal management, disaster resiliency, and the like.
While DOT does not validate the data submitted by local government units, the DILG requires the presence of a local tourism officer, tourism and information assistance desk, and data tracking system for tourism at the very least.
One of the ways in which an LGU can comply is to have a database of tourism related establishments that are registered in a particular area.
In addition, cultural indicators such the presence of a local council for the promotion of arts and culture, appropriation and utilization of budgets for tourism, arts and culture, and inventory of cultural properties as called for, in consonance with the mandates of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.
As far as tourism development is concerned, money is not always the best indicator. Let us learn from examples set by countries like Bhutan which set a cap at the number of visitors yearly to maintain their quality of life, or cities like Amsterdam which prevented the disneyfication of its tourism enterprises.