BAGUIO CITY – The Cordillera office of the Department of Tourism (DOT-CAR) recently outlined the emerging potentials of the region’s tourism industry that will contribute in bolstering the tourist arrivals to the various must-see destinations in the future.
DOT-CAR regional director Jovita Ganongan said that among the tourism potentials of the region are nature and wellness tourism, creative tourism, farm and food tourism, culture and heritage tourism and sports and adventure tourism.
She claimed that the agency also continues to extend the appropriate support to the various Cordillera festivals being conducted in the different parts of the region, especially on marketing and promotion to contribute in providing tourists with the necessary information to allow them to make informed choices on where to spend their vacation.
Further, the agency will also sustain its support to major and special events in the different parts of the region to draw in visitors to these locations thus exposing them to various Cordillera sceneries and tourist spots, especially the emerging ones.
The DOT-CAR official pointed out the need to organize and prepare the necessary tour packages to the different tourist spots and other emerging destinations as part of destination circuits to allow visitors to visit several places within a certain period of time.
Ganongan stated that the Cordillera is blessed with rich culture and heritage which must be maximized by the concerned tourism industry stakeholders to draw the interest of foreign and domestic tourists in considering which places to visit in the country.
According to her, there are also ongoing validation activities of the tourism department for emerging tourist destinations that will be included as part of the Philippine Experience Program (PEP) where visitors will be provided with a first-hand experience of the place they intend to visit.
Earlier, the tourism department developed the PEP as one of its flagship programs to provide visitors with the necessary experience of the culture, the heritage, the way of life of the people, among others, and become tourism promoters themselves. By Dexter A. See
