THE world’s best destinations won’t bring in tourists if they have to endure the world’s worst airports.
Being in and out of domestic airports almost every single day of the campaign has brought the point home all too clearly for Team PNoy senatorial candidate Edgardo “Sonny” Angara, who called for immediate government action to improve local airports.
“The Philippines has been gaining international recognition as a go-to place in Asia, and we really should bank on what we already have, the scenic spots across the country,” Angara said. “But we need to improve the ingress and egress points to these destinations.”
Angara has been taking direct commercial flights to provincial campaign sorties and has personally experienced the travails of ordinary airline passengers going through local airports.
“Boosting our tourism, in itself, is not a problem. There are areas in the country, such as Caramoan in Camarines Sur, which have acquired worldwide appreciation even before Filipinos became aware of its beauty. The problem rests in making sure that we have airports that can accommodate the number of tourists who would be visiting,” the lawmaker from Aurora said.
“On a recent trip to Bohol, I was dismayed to find out that they had to turn tourists away because they cannot accommodate big tour groups, say, from China and Korea due to flight shortage,” he added. “This is a nice problem to have in a sense but we should realize that the loss of tourists, brought about by the state of our airports, translates to loss of people who could have poured in valuable currency to the country.”
Angara, principal author of RA 9447 or the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines Act, underscored the need to make airport development a number one priority of the administration. He noted that some airports in the country have been long due for an upgrade, and among the issues that need to be addressed are short runways, runway traffic, night flight capacity and inadequate facilities.
“The tourism campaigns of the government will be for naught if the state of the airports, especially in the provinces which are tourist destinations, remain the same,” he said.
As a three-term congressman of Aurora, Angara also authored RA 9593 or the Tourism Act of 2009, which promotes tourism as an engine of investment, employment and economic growth, pressed the government to put in more money for the construction of new airports and the upgrade of existing ones.
Late last year, President Benigno Aquino III and the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) Board approved the construction of new airports.
The P4.7 billion Bicol International project in Daraga, Albay will replace the existing Legazpi Airport. The P8-billion New Bohol (Panglao) Airport Development Project, on the other hand, once constructed is expected to spur development as more businesses grow and more tourists come to the Visayas region.
Angara, who is currently pushing for the enactment of measures that aim to boost the sector, particularly medical tourism and agri-tourism, stressed how important it is to boost the country’s tourism in order to generate jobs in different industries.
“Tourism adds to the country’s gross domestic product and creates jobs for Filipinos. In 2011, travel and tourism accounted for about nine percent of GDP and is forecast to rise by 5.2 percent per annum by 2022. The industry also accounts for over 3.5 million jobs,” the lawmaker said.
The Philippines received four million international tourists in 2011, a record breaking increase of 11percent compared with the previous year.
The government has set the target of 10 million inbound tourists by 2016, the final year of its National Tourism Development Plan.
Angara laments, however, that the Philippines has been lagging behind its Asian neighbors in terms of tourism shares.
With close to four million tourist arrivals in 2011, the country ranks way behind its neighbors—Malaysia (25 million), Hongkong (22 million), Thailand (19 million), Singapore (10.4 million), Indonesia (7.6 million), and Vietnam (6 million), according to the 2012 report of the UN World Tourism Organization.
“The issues surrounding the development of our airports have to be addressed soon. There should be no more excuses. Time is of the essence here,” Angara stressed.