Philippine tourism, which has been heavily reliant on the domestic market and still a long way from 2019 performance, must be globally competitive, according to Benito Bengzon Jr, executive director of Philippine Hotel Owners Association (PHOA) and former tourism undersecretary.
At the first Hotel Sales and Marketing Association (HSMA) Summit last week, he urged the audience to be “mindful that the competition is not just among ourselves, among local destinations, (or) among local hotels or resorts”.
“The competition is on a global scale and we must make our mark,” he emphasised.
Confident that the country will meet its targeted 4.8 million foreign arrivals this year, seeing how it has already reached over four million in the first nine months of the year, Bengzon emphasised that “we must also realise that we are still a long way off from the record 8.2 million foreign visitors we attracted in 2019”.
To give the industry a competitive edge, PHOA, the country’s biggest private sector in tourism, has in the pipeline 40 quality hotels with 15,000 keys for completion in the next three years. The association also has 65 member companies owning 200 existing hotels and resorts with 40,000 keys.
PHOA is working with the Department of Tourism (DoT) on two projects to help make hotels more relevant and globally competitive.
The first is the review of DoT’s National Accommodation Standards (NAS) – the voluntary star rating system for accommodation establishments.
“We want to make sure that standards are on par with those found in other destinations. In other words, the quality of facilities, amenities and services of a five-star hotel in Manila should be the same as in a five-star hotel in Bangkok, Singapore or Tokyo,” noted Bengzon.
The second is a review of the Philippine Hotel Industry Strategic Action Plan (PHISAP) to determine whether the findings and conclusions of the previous hotel roadmap completed in 2016 are still valid, ensuring that the hotel roadmap will be aligned with the overall Philippine tourism roadmap.
The roll-out dates for NAS and PHISAP will be announced by the DoT soon.
