Did you know that we barely scratched the tourism potential of the Philippines? And that we are actually losing huge development opportunities (and along with it, job generation) every year that we fail to respond to that opportunity?

I will give you just one comparative study of numbers. During pre-pandemic, the amount of tourism receipts (that’s money spent by incoming foreign nationals) was about $6 Billion. And this will shock you - Filipinos who go abroad on the same year spent more that $12 Billion! And that’s with the fact that the Philippines is a poor country.

Of course, some will call this a disaster, just try to imagine the amount of foreign exchange that leaks out of the country.

But if you ask me, we should see it as an opportunity.

That the Filipinos, no matter how third world the country is, have the spending power for travel. That they are in search of unique and quality tourist destinations. That the Philippines lacks a good number of unique and quality destinations. That it should give us the impetus to develop…. yes… unique and quality destinations.

There are so many options actually to achieve this and retain the tourism dollars that flows out, encourage investment, provide hundreds of thousands of jobs, and provide tax revenues to the big brother that is the government. You cannot imagine how even two billions dollars that gets to be spent internally could benefit the entire country.

One option is to develop a so-called Tourism City in any part in or near a major gateways (where international flights land). It’s more of a branding strategy, actually. But if it is implemented to its core, that is establishing a large area to become primarily a tourist destination that is complete with unique and high quality tourist attractions and facilities with adequate infrastructure and movement services, we can have a major catalyst for national progress.

Of course it won’t be easy to implement this, specially with decision makers who are stuck in their happy desks and hardly entertain ideas like this. But we have premier benchmarks that showed that it is possible to achieve this with the right leadership and motivation. I won’t dig deep into that, i would just say that it is highly possible and with a good possibility of success.

Will the government spend for it? Of course, yes! It is the one with the mandate and enough resources to jumpstart things. Then the private sector can follow, they just need to be inspired and assured that the endeavor can work. Given the amount of revenue and economic benefits, the government should have very little reason to dismiss this possibility. If not, other countries can take on this opportunity for their territories.

I actually floated this to some folks who work with huge development programs. I just added that there is no such thing yet in the Philippines and it looks so feasible (of course only for those who have the resources). Now, let’s see if a tourism city will develop in our lifetime.