It’s summer! With the first semester for the next school year still two months away (and a good four months away for those enrolling in UP, Ateneo, and De La Salle), not a few are thinking of getting that ideal summer getaway.
Thankfully, it may not be a difficult decision to make. There are many choices for a good vacation place around us, thanks to the improvements and investments made by both the government and private sector in our tourism industry.
Taking advantage of increased tourist arrivals in the Province, Negros Oriental has adopted a Tourism Roadmap that will be its engine for growth in terms of livelihood and employment.
The Department of Tourism presented last week a blueprint of the roadmap before some 100 tourism stakeholders in Negros Oriental. DOT 7 Director Rowena Montecillo presented surprising statistics in that forum: While the number of foreign tourists who visited Central Visayas grew by over 50 percent last year, Negros Oriental has outpaced Bohol in terms of foreign tourist arrivals.
We say the data is surprising, to say the least, because anyone who takes the fastcraft from Cebu to Dumaguete has seen that most of the foreign tourists disembark in Tagbilaran, halfway through the Cebu-Dumaguete voyage.
Did the earthquake last October change all that?
If, indeed, we are the second biggest tourist destination in Central Visayas, is our tourism infrastructure well-organized for the tourism boom? We have to envy the packaging of the tourist spots in Bohol. That kind of an organization is something we have yet to see in Negros Oriental.
If, indeed, we are the second biggest tourist destination in Central Visayas, we should see more inbound tour groups, better infrastructure, better tour guides.
We hope the DOT figures are accurate. The last thing we need is to find ourselves in the wrong place because we were guided by the wrong figures.
