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New cruise tourism strategy for the Philippines
Sunday, 29 Dec, 2015
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The Philippines has outlined its plans to attract more cruise ship traffic after the Department of Tourism (DOT) endorsed the National Cruise Development Strategy for the Philippines under a USAid program.
The strategy is to provide strategic direction for the government and private sector, and aims to increase traffic to about 50,000 cruise passengers next year.
"We have always maintained that the Philippines has very strong potential to cruise tourism, considering that we are an archipelago with 7,100 islands and conceivably we can be a cruise destination, a self-contained cruise destination. Not only a port of call as what we are seeing currently," said tourism undersecretary Benito C. Bengzon, Jr.
He acknowledged Philippines’ ports need to be upgraded to attract a bigger share of the growing cruise tourism industry in Southeast Asia.
"We have to attack it on all fronts. "The first is to make the Philippines part of the strategic direction for cruise tourism by starting with the ports. It’s important for us to make sure that our ports comply with or satisfy the minimum requirements of the big ships. And I say big ships because the trend is towards larger ships. Now you have mega ships carrying 4,000 to 5,000 passengers that are ported in Southeast Asia," added Bengzon.
Port developments will be concentrated in Manila, Puerto Princesa, Subic, and Boracay, he said.
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