Memo to Pres. Aquino re Tourism:

Fight the Disease, Not the Symptoms!!


The Philippine Star in its November 13 issue headlined “Noy slams APEC allies over travel advisories” saying that President Aquino expressed anger and displeasure with the travel advisories posted by the governments of the APEC member nations warning their citizens to avoid travel to the Philippines.

Well, this is indeed the ultimate in inanity on President Aquino’s part. Why is he complaining about the negative travel advisories when what is needed is a robust and vigorous effort on his government’s part to address the very causes that trigger these advisories?

Are governments like New Zealand’s supposed to completely ignore the August 23rd tourist bus massacre right in the midst of the country’s prime tourism enclave? Certainly the wishy-washy, long drawn out “investigation” and the seemingly flaccid and impotent “findings” that he announced reassured no one that similar incidents would not take place in the future.

“…with the terror advisories recently we were singled out as a place to avoid”, Pnoy bewailed.

Listen, President Aquino, with all due respect I am a Filipino by birth and I would very much like to visit our country more often and even spend half a year there at a time, but man, not only am I afraid and terrified over the peace and order situation, I am also quite discouraged from spending time in Manila because most of that time will be spent in gridlocked traffic and amid a veritable fog of pollutants in the air!!

Not only am I afraid of being robbed, assaulted or killed by criminals in all forms and guises, I am also totally scared that not only are these criminals in cahoots with the police forces, the very perpetrators of the crimes could be the police themselves. Now tell me with a straight face that these fears are not well placed.

I am also afraid of our taxi drivers. I was in Manila not too long ago and tried to get a ride to my hotel in Ermita from the airport. The only transportation offered to me would have cost at least 500 pesos. I know a taxi ride from the airport to my hotel should no exceed 100 pesos. So I decided to walk a quarter of a mile to the police check point into NAIA and asked the police officers if they could hail me a regular taxi.

“Oh, no”, the head of the unit advised. “Do not go into any taxi on your own as you could be kidnapped or robbed” he added.

He kindly took me into his jeep to a busy intersection and there hailed a taxicab. He made it known to the driver that he had taken all the information needed and expected the driver to take me to my hotel with no problems. Great, the police helped me, but why does a traveler need that kind of security intercession for a simple taxi ride? Why does it become necessary for visitors to pay five times the regular rate just to get a reliable, safe ride from an international airport to a five star hotel?

Then there is this predicament that if a local entrepreneur, whether a store or even a transportation provider like a jeepney-for-charter , notices that a potential customer is a foreigner or a balikbayan visitor that the price of the goods or services could rise almost by some 100 percent. I was with a group of Filipino friends in Las Vegas recently and some were married to white Americans. In the course of the conversation the husbands joked that in the Philippines, when they are there, they are automatically charged the “white tax”, i.e. if they and not their wives are involved in whatever transaction, they have to pay extra.

Dear Mr. President, if you want to make the Philippines a heavily visited country by tourists who can aid the economy you must have the people working for you see to it that there is a sound and stable tourism infrastructure in place at all levels.

Take care of the fundamentals such as peace and order. Reform not only the institutions that are directly associated with tourism but everything else that affects the quality of life of our people. In other words, make the Philippines a country that we can all love, embrace and visit often without fear for our lives or safety, without concern that we will be gouged and with the reassurance that should something not go as planned that there is a reliable safety net to fall back on for effective remedies (e.g. medical services?).

And yes, many Filipino-Americans will be flying home soon, perhaps me included. I’ll probably skip Manila and go straight to Cebu and even in that beautiful “Queen City of the South” traffic and smog are becoming a problem. Ditto with Cagayan de Oro and Davao City. I hope that the leadership in these 3 cities in the south take a very close look at the problems that persist in Manila and take steps to avoid them.

Address and cure the illness, not the symptoms. Do not “rage against the dying of the light” as Dylan Thomas put it addressing his ailing mother, do as Peter Benenson of Amnesty International once simply suggested : Light a Candle.
ldq44@aol.com