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After holding a mass for the victims of the hostage tragedy last Sunday at the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral, the Department of Tourism Central Visayas (DOT 7) is set to hold a regional stakeholders meeting with the tourism secretary this month.
It will be a whole day meeting in Cebu so that tourism stakeholders could meet and ask Tourism Secretary Alberto Lim about his plans for the industry, said Rowena Lu Y. Montecillo, DOT 7 officer-in-charge yesterday.
?This will be the first time that he will come down here as the Tourism Secretary and of course the stakeholder wants to meet him and talk to him about different concerns aside from how we can minimize the ill effects caused by the hostage taking incident,? Montecillo said.
Montecillo cited three things that the Cebu stakeholders would want from the tourism secretary when they would meet.
?First they want the Secretary to share his visions to the private sector, second he should also inform the private sectors of his expectations and how the private sector can assist him realize that vision and third, he must identify specific action plans for the region,? Montecillo said.
Montecillo said that the tourism department had already gathered the visions of the different regional officers and directors and they were just waiting for the collated one.
?Of course our vision is in line with the President's (Benigno Aquino III) thrust that is towards poverty alleviation and eradicating corruption,? Montecillo said.
The date for the meeting had not yet been made available yet because the Lim's schedule was full, Montecillo said.
?He promised though that he will find time to really come even for just a few hours and not stay overnight,? Montecillo said.
Montecillo said that the tourism department believed the effects of last week's the hostage taking incident would not get worse and this should be communicated as an isolated case.
Montecillo cited the recent visit of ambassadors and top officials from the countries of Pakistan, Iraq, Venezuela, Indonesia, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam in Cebu as one way to tell the rest of the world that the hostage-taking incident was an isolated case and it could happen anywhere.
She said it was even better that the ambassadors' and foreign officials' visit were for strengthening of relationships between their countries and ours.
?We are also optimistic that the negative effects such as the cancellations by tourists from Hong Kong and China is just temporary and will not influence others to also do the same and issue a travel ban,? she said.
She said if the other countries would have wanted to issue a travel ban to the Philippines they would have did it after Hong Kong issued its advisory.
?We still have Japan, Korea and Europe and we don't expect any cancellations from them any time soon because of that incident,? she said.
