Every political subdivision in the country to date has its own identity in terms of the conduct of crowd drawing events to spur more visitors. Festivals are often named after a product, a prevailing practice or whatever it is that is symbolic of or unique to the place. This branding is intended to attract the public to visit the place and witness or participate in events lined up for the festivity. Many local governments have gone into converting their founding anniversaries into festivals as also promoting their localities. An underlying rationale for these festivities are business and tourism purposes.
Twenty-three years ago, the Panagbenga or the Baguio flower festival was conceptualized by local officials and philanthropists purposely to develop an activity that will bring in tourists to the city and nearby places during the lean tourism season that happens to fall in February. It was also during this same period that European urban planners came to the city to study how to maximize the development potentials of the city and its neighboring towns of La Trinidad, Sablan, Tuba, and Tublay. Considering the limited land area of the city, 57.4 square kilometers, its was thought that development opportunities outside the city should be spread into the adjacent towns. Initially, the growth area was limited to Baguio-La Trinidad-Itogon- Sablan-Tuba and it was projected to be a potential growth area considering the proximity of the municipalities to the city. Lately, the Regional Development Council (RDC) in the Cordillera expanded the coverage of these five municipalities to already include Tublay because it also adjoins the city. This is how BLISTT came about.
In terms of maximizing the visitor factor of festivals, Panagbenga aims to as a unifying festival among the surrounding localities. Otherwise, the local governments can align their crowd drawing events with the month-long festivities in the city so that visitors can have a more diverse checklist of places to see and the municipalities can share in the visitors spending. Festivals are so popular and the surrounding municipalities have developed their own signature festivals. La Trinidad has its Strawberry festival for the whole month of March, Tuba’s Ava festival is in December, and Sablan’s Fruit festival which happens in November. For the coming years, Panagbenga organizers and even Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan want the future flower festivals to be inclusive by allowing the active participation of representatives from the BLISTT in the conceptualization, planning, and execution of the festival. In fact, BLISTT local governments had been time and again prodded by Mayor Domogan to align their crowd drawing events to the schedule of the city’s month-long events so that the said localities will be able to get a share of the huge volume of visitors that flock to the city annually just to witness the flower festival events.
We strongly support the advocacy of Panagbenga organizers and city officials for the BLISTT local governments to align their crowd-drawing events to the city’s flower festival schedule. This will be mutually complimentary and beneficial but it will also provide a more interesting and varied menu for visitors in terms of attractions, products, and cultures. It is a win-win situation. With Baguio as a jump-off point, BLISTT officials can conceptualize the significant events to attract tourists to plan their trips to include these outlying areas.
We commend the Panagbenga organizers for exerting extra efforts to reach out to the BLISTT local officials to consider aligning their major festivities with the Panagbenga to give more visitors the chance to discover hidden scenic tourist destinations in the said places. Now that BLISTT representatives will be part of the planning for future Panagbenga events, it is hoped that opportunities will open for a much bigger and better festival that would be named after the BLISTT.
Because of the commonalities among the BLISTT localities, concerned local officials can start venturing in sharing resource and best practices not only for tourism purposes but also for socio-economic development that will provide their constituents with more employment and livelihood opportunities aside from providing better avenues for investments. The BLISTT localities can grow together and become a huge community of people with common aspirations. Let us enhance the practice of sharing and caring because we need everyone to help address problems that arise as our communities grow and develop.
Let us closely work together in providing the present and future generations with enough space and opportunities to build their own legacies. We must continue to introduce innovations in our activities we had lined up for our crowd drawing events so that domestic and foreign visitors, especially the balikbayans, will be encouraged to keep coming back to the places where they originally come from because of what we are doing as steward