If history is any guide, the visual experience is the No. 1 marketing strategy of every tourism country.
When tourists flock in with awe and admiration at man- made gems like the Great Wall of China, the ancient temples of Greece, the Coliseum and aqueducts in Rome, or the Pyramids of Egypt, they all boil down to one common genre: architecture and design. {{more}}
But why in the world are we not learning from history, if we wanted so much to draw in tourists like magnets? Tourists come here for a pleasant break from real life. They come for sunshine and spectacular scenery. And when their visual experience becomes downright unpleasant and ends in disgust, they simply look for another city or, worse, another country.
Today, Dumaguete City is a fast-growing city with still so much unproductive lands to build on. Construction is up despite the economic bust.
However, we see a lot of bland and lifeless buildings sprouting everywhere. If we were to think long term on tourism, design should be the first concern of authorities and of building owners, mindful still of the cost.
Take Hong Kong, for example. Hong Kong’s streets may be visually dirty to some degree, but it has invested heavily on design and architecture. The Hong Kong skyline has a world-class design for skyscrapers, better than Singapore’s. And each skyscraper there was designed by some of the world’s best architects.
Hong Kong, as we know it, is a haven for shopping tourists. Retailers there know that to attract a mass of shopping tourists, their boutiques and buildings should magnetize them, visually.
Ned Carlos
Carlos & Antique
Architects
Dumaguete City
