Tourism players told to tap OFW tourists

Updated March 30, 2009 12:00 AM

CEBU, Philippines - Although Central Visayas especially Cebu has become one of the favorite tourism destinations among foreign clients, the region should work out its weakness when it comes to attracting the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) as a market.

A recognized global economist, Ramon M. Quesada said Cebu in particular, should work out on attracting OFW tourist, as this is one of the “weakest links” identified for Cebu tourism sector.

Of the total 459,212 OFW or global Filipino that visit the Philippines in a year, only very small percentage of this consider Cebu as part of their vacation get-away, most of them go to other destinations like Luzon.

Bohol, on the other hand, has been able to take advantage of the OFW-tourists, because of its aggressive “home coming” programs, including the two-week fiesta celebration, that will not only attract OFW Boholanos to go home, but also lure vacationing OFW to go to Bohol for their planned vacation or get-away.

“Cebu should exert more efforts in attracting OFW-tourists. Very few come to Cebu. Make it easy for them, provide a good travel package for the OFW-tourists,” Quesada said adding that Cebu should provide a dedicated package for the OFW tourist market, as this emerging market of the tourism sector has been overlooked by Cebu tourism stakeholders.

In this time of foreign tourists slowdown, tourism destinations like Cebu, should take advantage of the global Filipino market, as they are the “sure” market for tourism. Crisis or no crisis, Filipinos working abroad do not postpone their yearly vacation schedules, and when they are home, plan for domestic travel is part of the vacation plan of an OFW.

In 2007, DOT record showed that of the total 240,335 OFWs made domestic travel plans around the country, only 11,717 considered Central Visayas as their destination.

Large part of OFW-tourists during the year, went to National Capital Region (NCR), Bicol, Cordillara Administrative Region (CAR) and Western Visayas.

If Cebu will be able to get bigger chunk of the OFW tourists, Quesada said it could further sustain its tourism sector, while global travel is seen to hit a slowdown this year.

Quesada, who is an accredited consultant of USAID, UNDP, Asia Foundation, and program director at the University of Asia and the Pacific, said that Cebu, and other parts of the Central Visayas region, except Bohol, has good potential to capture the active OFW tourist, but it needs to double-time its effort in luring this emerging market for tourism.

He said Filipinos who are working abroad are still holding on to their jobs, and large number of them are spared from massive retrenchments, because they are working as teachers, or healthcare service providers, which are part of the basic necessity services.

Of the nine million Filipinos working abroad, 42 percent of them are already permanent residents of a country, 48 percent are temporary (working with contracts), and 10 percent are irregular. — Ehda M. Dagooc