THREE regions in the Visayas have come together to promote diving and other tourism-related activities to provide more options and to encourage foreign visitors to stay longer in the country.
Department of Tourism (DOT) 7 Director Rowena Montecillo told reporters yesterday that Regions 6, 7 and 8 have united to come up with one tourism campaign to market Visayas as a diving destination in the international market through the One Visayas tourism platform.
“We think that if we converge we will be able to offer longer tour packages or itineraries to foreign tourists,” she said.
After a series of consultations, Montecillo said the three regions have agreed to make diving as a priority area in tourism promotions because it is common for the three regions and can attract long-staying and high-spending tourists.
“Visayas is blessed with beautiful dive sites,” she said. “With this unified tourism effort, we intend to increase the stay of a tourist from the average of one to three days to seven to 10 days.”
Although Visayas is now known as the country’s new typhoon belt, Montecillo is confident this will not negatively affect their diving promotions because Visayas is blessed with islands where diving boats can easily hide when a typhoon or depressions occurs.
Other activities
Montecillo said One Visayas plans will not solely focus on marketing diving but will also include developing inland tour packages.
“If they get stuck because of bad weather, they can still enjoy our tourism activities like eco-tourism, adventure as well as cultural and heritage tourism,” she said.
Earlier this year, the Climate Change Commission acknowledged the changing pattern of typhoons in the country from passing northern Luzon to the Visayas, including southern Luzon, Masbate, Romblon, Boracay, Iloilo and northern Palawan.
Cebu’s top dive source markets are Koreans and Japanese while the divers’ profile in Bohol and Negros are mostly Americans and Europeans.
Benedict Reyes, one of the commissioners of the Philippine Commission on Sports Scuba Diving (PCSSD), an agency attached to the DOT, noted that Visayas is a popular destination among international and local divers because of the islands’ proximity to one another.
By next year, Montecillo said One Visayas will come up with its own branding and marketing materials. By February, the three regions will determine which international and local travel fairs they will participate in to jumpstart promotion. Meanwhile, DOT 7 already shared the initiative to the Japanese Association of Travel Industries in Cebu (Jatic) of which officials expressed their excitement and support of the project.
“They said they will help sell our dive sites in Japan during the dive fair on April.
They are also willing to translate the marketing materials to Japanese,” said Montecillo.
The three regions has yet to determine the total budget involved for the project but, Montecillo said they will be assisted by the DOT’s Tourism Promotions Board.
Diving is one of the tourism products and is a niche market identified by the country’s National Tourism Development Plan as a tourism-revenue booster.
Popular spot
Reyes, who is also the president of the Philippine Association on Underwater Activities (PAUA) added that the Philippines is a popular weekend dive spot among divers from Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Japan. High tourism receipts are generated from the European market as they stay for a minimum of three weeks to one month in the country.
Divers account 10 percent of the country’s total arrivals. The revenue in diving makes up a quarter of the country’s tourism receipts.
The One Visayas is a marketing campaign initiated by former Cebu governor Gwendolyn Garcia. The project was an attempt to bring together the provinces of the three regions in Visayas to showcase the best of their culture and art forms.