Our test happens today (Sunday), at 5:30 in the afternoon, at the Rose Garden in Burnham Park, to be precise.
This is when the Enchanting Baguio Christmas Fair formally opens, when the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, all 85-man strong, will gift our people with a Special Concert of the finest music that can be brought into our midst, when the Baguio Tourism Council — dormant these past 11 years — gets its first acid test as festival tourism managers.
I have no doubt at all that we’re all out and all in for this afternoon’s prized event, something that has never ever been done before, something that fittingly kicks off a 40-day calendar of Christmas festivities worth remembering beyond Grandma’s recollection, something that we have toiled and sweated out these past several weeks.
Confidently, it will come to pass, and we’d get through it all, all the way in fact through the many well-curated, well-chosen events that make up An Enchanting Baguio Christmas, the likes of which can only take place nowhere else but here, right in our midst, the likes of which no other locality can ever strive to approximate.
The past days have never been as hectic, nerve-wracking, heart-wrenching and soul-stirring for those of us who have gladly accepted to feel the brunt of it all, giving our city folks and esteemed visitors as well a Baguio Christmas fit for a Christmas present. It’s been one heck of a task that has been embraced from Day One and will continue to be so till Day’s end.
In no time at all, as we survey where new structures have risen, we’re patting ourselves for something that ordinarily would be hollered down, but magically had to be welcomed in all naivete. Prepping up efforts are now beginning to show manifest signs of the coming Yuletide clime, enough to make passers-by gawk in lingering moments.
A strange, exciting word came into being: Chalets. Yes, these are the cutesy pieces of European-influenced houses that have risen at the Rose Garden from the ground up to serve as venues for the pockets of Christmas Markets much in vogue in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland. Yes, this where anyone would find his dream Chrismassy discoveries, from delectable eats to glitzy knick-knacks to Santa’s hidden presents to what-have-yous and what-have-beens.
Thanks God for his loving mercies, Sarah (and before her Ramon) veered away from where we are to give Baguio the prayed for breather in welcoming the 85-man musical group we’ve been calling simply as the PPO. Tonight promises to be an evening of fine classical music that only the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra can gift our people. Chamber music, that’s what the knowledgeable would term it. Thank you, Maestro Nick Lizaso for bringing this institution into our midst, for letting our people have an earful to last a mouthful long after the last musical strain has petered down to the final syllable.
Thank you Mayor Benjie for the full trust in our collective capacity to bring it on, despite skepticism thrown our way. It’s simply our faith that it can happen, that an Enchanting Baguio Christmas is what we need to make 2019 the real fresh air to make our breath worth the bated wait. It’s simply our belief that tourism is beyond the usual plaudits grown in age and luster as Baguio begun missing out on opportunities grand enough to work for, strive for, and care for in plain surrender to the greater good.
SINCE WAY, WAY BACK, tourism has long been the bread-and-butter life of Baguio’s economy, an economic driver that has made possible much of the modernizing advances we’ve been having. We all know what has been ailing the tourism industry. We all recognize that tourism has had its share of brickbats, mostly from residents who may have had enough of all the things that they say are tourism-generated.
With tourists jamming up every nook and cranny, traffic congestion seems to have become a common affliction. Roads are easily clogged up end-to-end even in unheard places. Nightlife has become a petty nuisance, as pubs and bars compete for carousing clients. Every cuss word may have been cast every which way where tourists converge.
It isn’t surprising that the derisive word “over-tourism’ may have taken off from what is experienced every time the great swelling crowds are here every little chance they get. That experience gets magnified when the horde is up here. That’s all because just about everyone is here for the precious time of escaping the lowland heat, summertime or not, but mostly during super events that are actually staged precisely to raise tourism visits several notches up.
It is this very experience that the Baguio Tourism Council, reactivated after more than a decade, has opted to face head-on as key stakeholders grapple with on-the-ground realities. In recent years, hotel occupancy has been on a downtrend, with hotels and inns barely able to make do a given year. About the only time that their facilities are substantially booked is when a festival is underway.
On super-events like Christmas, Panagbenga, and the summertime episodes of city life, they come in significant numbers, family-by-family, enticed to take a breather or two on rejuvenating climes that are uniquely Baguio’s. Land travel has been abbreviated enough for the visitors to be up in the clouds through a relaxing 3-1/2 hour drive through expressways.
On just about any ordinary day, they still come up, admittedly in reduced numbers, but they still do. Without having to be brash about it, let’s be frank: Baguio, despite the warts and woes of a muddling city life, remains to be a topnotch getaway destination. Our cooling climes, mainly from the only natural air-conditioning system operating nowhere else, are enough to lure them in at the slightest pretense.
No weekend treats can top off the refreshing environment one gets to experience when in Baguio. Every small chance available, they’re suddenly upon us, an overtourism ailment that suffices to make many city folks resentful that tourists are around.
Regulating tourism appears to be a sensible reaction, if only to check the congestion it brings onto hapless citizens like you and I. But does it really do that? Wouldn’t it in fact kill the goose that lays the golden egg?
The coming Christmas celebration here in Baguio may well offer the insights that can lay the foundation of a midterm and long term tourism plan for an industry crying for attention at this time. The goal is simple and clear: how do we inculcate a tourism brand like Festival Tourism as a way to bring out the best in what Baguio can offer?
For years, Christmas in Baguio has always been just the time for families to reunite, for friendships to be reaffirmed, for relationships be re-defined in relation to our sense of piety. It is celebrated every which way we can for family bonding, through events and activities that have been traditional, and therefore well-established.
This time around, something is new and innovative, a curated Christmas Market that is well in place in European cities, hardly the tiangge or baratilyo kind of enterprise that has given trade fairs and exhibitions the undeserved bad name in recent years.
Christmas bargains from well-decked shops adorned as chalets will be the stellar attractions, from roasted chestnuts, delectable cuisine, cosmopolitan beverages, to memorable souvenir items that have had no December appearance ever till now.
A 40-day celebration, from November 24, 2019 all the way to January 6, 2020, An Enchanting Baguio Christmas — that’s what the thematically influenced Festival is now a known signature event — promises to be a panorama of sights, sounds, and sighs that projects a multi-sensory experience of the Yuletide Season erupting in the crowd-converging places.
For us at BTC, and with Mayor Benjie fully supportive, there is no turning back. Make no mistake about it, this is simply the initial step of what is accepted as a long mile.
On long-term, there is need to energize the tourism sector in harmony with our natural environment, admitting that the industry can only thrive in an environment whose resources — the mountains, the forest cover, the trees, the water and air bred from these — are well-protected, preserved and nourish enough to secure posterity.
We recognize that tourism direction has to be fleshed out now, not just in sensitive consideration to residents’ sentiments, but precisely to keep us in line with global trends now dictating the tempo, style, and substance of tourism initiatives. Strategies that have long been the established norms in plotting tourism drives do need to be re-visited in keeping with the times, made more relevant by pressing environmental needs for protection, conservation, and even regeneration.
Fortunately, Baguio will always serve as a magnetizing charm anytime, anywhere, a shining example of family-oriented tourism that has been its hallmark all along. Meantime, enjoy the evening to the fullest!
