⌛ Tourist Arrival Holding Steady

I realy have the impression that the numbers are growing , but them again my sources are likely not the same.
This I can tell. : One of the autorities at immigration ( Cebu) tells me that from records of Dumaguete , there are between 400 and and even sometimes 480 each month ( mainly USA citizen) that extent their tourist Visa. A large number even extent to the maximum.
The new maximum stay is now ( all added up ) two whole years.
For chancing their policy of maximum stay , one good reason is given .. Foreign visitors mean money in the bank...
Perhaps I should start my own bank : How about : Earl,s Bank and Trust Co ? But then again.. would you trust me ?? :D

 

HeHe... Earl's bank good idea... but trust(ing) you with my money ???... hehe joke na lang. knowledge most of the time...

As it is for my Boss, we have staedily increasing numbers of visitors since the opening in Dec 2000. 2007 he will have 65+ percent of the max capacity.

cheers

Rhoody

 

The tourism register somehow have bleak assumptions about their datas of more US citizens coming to the Philippines,same as UK,except for koreans (korean invasion ). I have no doubt about the increase of americans coming .But isn't it because of Filipino trace or connections, filipinos (OFWs )who become naturalized americans or filipino married to an american bringing in 4 children and husband and all of them have US passports or friends of them as most of the bulk come from,sure there are back packers too,but such source of visits are unreliable ? Not because Ace durano did make an excellent job in tourism campaign across the pond,he is claiming it for his own glory . I have strong deslike for this guy .Same here and my family,had it not been of me having strong philippine connections ,there's less chances i would end up visiting PI or bringing my family in .On holiday I am bringing 4 brits including the naturalized me.That sure add up the number of brits coming.I have read accounts from philippine tourism rattling about increased in tourism visits.I guess they are from mostly full blooded koreans ,where big bulk of tourists come from.

Tourismwise, the Philippines is unknown in UK or just faint trace of it ,not too visible to catch interest . Flick over the pages of majority of holiday brochures in the high street ,the philippines isn't there , some should be thinking it's a very remote group of islands , guess what inhabited with cannibals and people wearing g strings eating dog stews and duck fetuses? With small portion greedy elite having thousands of shoe collections,corruption,muslim extremists in south, kidnappings etc ,can't blame it . With the rest of poor pinoys God knows how they survive,with most pictures flashing from BBC are likely from Tondo poor,people living in cardboards , stinking with open drains ...bringing the impression such a dodgy place to visit for any normal brit ... only perhaps suitable for the adventurous souls .Good or bad? You hv your say.

 

Diving trips under supervision of highly skilled divemasters like you are are a true assit for the Island and means income on taxes.aswell. Protecting the envirnonment and learing people at the same time is a respected thing that finds great admiration worldwide. It is not even long ago that the Phils had the WORST reputation when it comes to wildlife preserve. But yet so true the foreign investors , like the dive institutes and other kinds of eco / enviro holiday spending putted the whole "rotten "system up side down. Negros has one of the best dive spots in Asia. Negros is OFF LIMITS for commercial ornametal fish collecting for the aquariumtrade. Cebu is however not , and still one of the places where huge amount of Cyanide are used to "blow " the fish from their hidding in between the corals. Thus resulting in an all over mortality of not only plenty of other fish ( plus 80 poercent of the collectors items) but also the corals AND the plancton !!
I know Rhoody , that you are one of the very few people that realy care about it all and therefor you have my gratitute !
NOTE :
This does not mean that ALL Dive clubs and moreover Divemasters take REAL CARE !!

 

Good insight Pickeled Newt! I agree with you that most of the SO-CALLED American tourist are due to the fact that they are FROM the Philipinnes and bring their families. I talk about the PHL all the time to my friends and NO ONE ever THOUGHT of going to the PHL and YES they have such backward notions about the PHL as you have mentioned. I constantly get told that I am CRAZY to go to the PHL.........i.e. due to muslim terrorists, etc... The PHL is NOT in brochures and is NOT promoted as a fantastic place to vacation. Also, it does not help that what is MOSTLY promoted about the PHL is the POVERTY and pictures of shacks. The PHL has gotten a BAD RAP and a lot of misrepresentation.

 

You are so right about having all within certain balance. But never the less the people involved have a great task aswell when it comes to teach RESPECT for Gods creation. THis world now is OUR legacy to our children children... Some people ( please yabs you and I have our opinion on those ,but are not to put it here in writing) DISRESPECT it all leaving everything underwater as a big mess... Treating animal life ( and not only marinelife ) like SH...

 

I quite agree with Pickled Newt. Philippines is just not doing enough to promote itself. But the question is how to promote? It certainly is not lip service from the Dept of Tourism. It should be from the Dept of Interior. They should clean our streets first and foremost. New York as a trash dump in the 80s. But their first act was to clean the graffitti off the subway trains and station walls. It wasn't trying to make believe NY is a great vacation place. Then later, they razed the porno street on the 42nd. And established a great family theatres. THEN then promoted themselves on TV and elsewhere.
Philippine should clean up its act. Make recycling a part of everyday life. Make littering a crime as it should be. Clean up the sextourism that the country is actually promoting by being passive. Well, this might be much more difficult than the trash. Oh, well. Got to start from somewhere.

As for Cyndi's comment about bad rap and misrepresentation, I disagree. Most tour sites, most famous being Virtual Tourist, is actually quite fair and accurate in my view. I think it's time to stop blaming misrepresentation and bad rap, and start to look at ourselves more closely and CHANGE.

 

I just wrote an loooong reply and when I was uploading it everything broke down... but ok I know where I live, so I try to get the things together one more time...

First of all it's getting very scary, that I agree with Earl and Yabs on many topics. And thank you Earl for the comment... I actually walked at my resort on very thin ice cause I am many times the bad man who tells peopls that they cant do this and that is not allowed...
I don't go in anyones office throw their computer out of the window and burn their papers after I smashed all the cabinets... So why for gods sake are people (no matter from which country) doing equal things in my working place and destroy it.
It all comes down to the right education, and down to guys like us to spend time and effort into education of the community we are living in, in a friendly but direct way.

The education here sucks completely (yes I know we have Siliman and god kn ows who here), but they all learn for scores in exams and not for life...!

I give you guys an example what happend last week. My little litte one (6 years, grade 1) came home from school with an assignment for an english spelling-test (15 words) After 3.5 month in school grad 1 !!! they ar supposed to spell words like Archipelago and Andropods, but they dont learned that a day has 24 hours and NOT 12 am and 12 pm hours. This is a topic at the end of the year...

Being a bad boy I went to school and got her math teacher to the side asking her to spell Andropds for me... she f*cked it up completely, so I wrote it down and asked it to explain the meaning of it.... again, she had no clue.. at least the answered " maybe a animal?". I asked her why six year old kids are supposed to know that ? Answer: They only need to know the spelling for the test not the meaning.... The teacher and me asked together a student from High School .... He had no idea...

I guess most of the board members who's motherlanguage is not english or having a biological background may have probs with that word (german:Gliederfuessler hehe)

no need to say more
the more is our duty

cheers

Rhoody

 

Nice one. Good job. And funny to boot.