Monday, September 24, 2012
WITH 982 million tourists traveling the world and contributing over $1 trillion in tourism revenue, an economist pointed out that there is no doubt there is big business in tourism.
Economics professor Fernando Fajardo, who is also executive director of the Cebu Business Club, said aside from the $1 trillion, there should be more to the figure to include $200 billion for international transport and other revenues from industries that benefit from tourism.
Fajardo, who presented the Cebu Strategic Tourism Development Plan to industry stakeholders Friday, noted that the average annual growth rate of tourists from 1995 to 2011 was 3.95 percent and for tourism receipts, it was 6.04 percent.
Destinations in the Asia Pacific got 22 percent of the tourist visitors and 28 percent of the tourism revenue. Yet despite the boom in tourism in the region, Fajardo said the Philippines is “missing the boat.”
Indirect gains
He showed tourist-to-population ratios of other countries, with tourist magnets France and Spain having 122 tourists for every 100 in their population. The global tourist-to-population ratio is 14 for every 100. In the Philippines, it is four to one.
While studying how tourism grew in the Philippines, he said it took 15 years for the tourism figures to double.
Fajardo said tourism has a wide economic impact, which affects different sectors directly and indirectly. “The total impact (of tourism) is much higher than the direct impact. Direct expenditures multiply many times over,” he said, adding that tourism impacts a country’s GDP, employment and investments.
He cited tourism had a direct contribution of P194.7 billion or two percent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2011 but in total, it actually brought in P830.8 billion.
Direct employment reached 778,000 jobs but led to 3.5 million jobs. International tourism receipts were at P159.9 billion while investment in tourism was at P78.3 billion, which is 4.2 percent of the total investment in the country that year.
Priority engine
With tourism identified by the Aquino administration as a priority engine of growth, Fajardo said there should be a tourism plan in place to guide their actions.
The tourism road map was drafted after a group of 14 business chambers and civic organizations came together to form a partnership to plan for Cebu’s infrastructure.
Most of the projects the group proposed were tourism-related infrastructure, which led to the crafting of the tourism road map.
Based on the nine percent annual growth rate of tourists, Fajardo said the trend will show that Cebu can reach 2.8 million tourists by 2016. However, he said a viable target would be to grow 15 percent annually and see four million tourists in five years.
An optimistic target, however, could see five million tourists with an annual growth rate of 20 percent.
The unified plan divides Cebu into nine tourism clusters: mainland Metro Cebu, Mactan and Olango Island, Southern Cebu, North Cebu including Bantayan and Malapascua islands, Mid-West Cebu and the Camotes islands.
Still missing the boat? Why not visit gregmelep.com and improve your finances.
No comments:
Post a Comment