The brand new tourism campaign was launched last week by the Department of Tourism and taking advantage of Social Networks like Facebook and Twitter, the “It’s more fun in the Philippines” campaign immediately went viral.



Tourism growth*

(*Why 3 million is not something to be happy about)



Taking a deeper look into tourism in the Philippines, one wonders why the country is still behind Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia which surpass the annual 20 million tourists mark. While tourism is growing in numbers, I found a couple of articles explaining why this is so. One of which is that that the WOW Philippines campaign was not well received in Germany and Japan where people were having difficulty pronouncing it. But statistics from the DOT show that foreign tourists grew from Japan and Germany during the period where the campaign was used? (See above infographic).



Some critics claim that lack of transportation, including the reputation of having the “world’s worst airport” yet we see an increasing trend in tourism (aside from the dip in 2009 probably due to the global economic down turn?). Some claim security concerns like kidnappings and travel alerts issued against the Philippines yet we see the same increase in tourism growth. In fact, despite the negative publicity of the Hong Kong bus hijacking from last year, it seems that tourists are still pouring in.



Additionally, tourist arrivals are simply that: arrivals. The bigger question is how much do these foreign tourists bring in to the Philippine economy? Look at it this way, when 300 people visit your store, how many of those translate into sales? How many were so happy of their purchase that they decide to come back?



It’s all about the experience



So the question still remains, why is tourism lagging in the Philippines? After discussing with several sources the most popular excuses are:



1. Lack of Marketing/Advertising (To pull tourists in)

2. Lack of Infrastructure (To let tourists stay and get around)

3. Security Concerns (Bad press, kidnappings, etc.)



However one needs to realize that Tourism is an “experience”, we’re selling an experience here, in fact we’re selling Philippines as the most fun thing on earth. So here’s some things we can probably take a look at:



1. Quality of tourism product (How authentic is it? Are we too “market oriented”? How do we ensure that tourists have more fun?)

2. The way businesses are treated as they are approached in industrial settings (Are we promoting enterprises who can make the visitor experiences richer and more memorable or penalizing them?)

3. Non-consideration of impacts on host communities and immediate environment (This is important because the long term implication might destroys the immediate source of resource and identity of the place not to mention the attraction that pulls the visitors to the place).



A long way to go



So where are we left now? Well the improvements in the airports, security and the campaigns are a good start, but one really needs to take a look at deeper, underlying and longer impacting considerations that help ensure that it is going to be more fun in the Philippines in the years to come.



Special thanks to Chard Gonzalo for providing insights to this article.

What are you eating this Holiday season… and how do you plan to counter it?


Note: Material used in the infographic from various sources.

Are you itching to loose those Holiday pounds? Check out these fun runs and marathons for December.

Download the printable version here.



Note: Material used in the infographic from pinoyfitness.com

Early this week, Trend Micro released their Online shopping safety tips infographic and this got me thinking of how applicable this was to the Philippines?



After some research, I found my answer – while the percentage of the population that has access to the internet has been increasing, it remains a lackluster 6.5% as of 2009. That means less than 6 million Filipinos have internet access. Various reports from Yahoo! also indicate that on average, less than 5% of Filipinos go online every month to shop and instead majority goes online to use Social Networks or to search. To add more insult to injury, less than 5% of the entire population have credit cards – the typical payment method that is utilized for online shopping.



Maybe this model has changed since 2009/2010 due to the numerous groupon/coupon sites that have been cropping up? But we’ll see by next year how this improves.



Note: Material used in the infographic from various sources.

We received a lot of questions, comments and reactions about The cost of the Starbucks 2012 Planners. So we updated our infographic based on the suggestions and corrections and of course added some new information.



Note: Starbucks is a registered trademark of Starbucks Co.

Financials, Nutritional Information and images used for the infographic are taken from the Starbucks website.

A lot of people ask me, how much it would cost to collect the Starbucks 2012 Planners. The cheapest way to do this is via Option 1 – collecting 9 Featured beverages (a Short Peppermint Mocha is only Php140.00) and 8 Core beverages (a Short Brewed Coffee is only Php95.00Php85.00). This would cost around Php2,020.00Php1,940.00 compared to Php2,185.00Php1,955.00 for Option 2.



You could further save Php85.00 by bringing your own mug and getting a Php5.00 discount for each purchase bringing your overall cost to Php1,935.00Php1,855.00. That will still cost you Php9,675.00Php9,275.00 to collect all 5 variants of the planner by January 8.



Note: Starbucks is a registered trademark of Starbucks Co.

Financials and images for the infographic are taken from the Starbucks website.

Have you been receiving a lot of spam messages about a free iPad on Facebook? Read up on Trend Micro’s Blog about the full story behind it.



While this spam is virtually harmless in the sense that it does not install malicious software on your desktop, laptop or Facebook applications. Malicious persons behind it are earning money from ads clicked by unsuspecting users on the “In Memory of Steve Jobs, we’re giving away 1,000 free iPad 2′s” page.



PREVENTION

As much as possible, do not click on the “Free iPad” Facebook spam that you may have received via Facebook. This includes wall posts, chats, comments, emails or private messages.



CURE

If you have inadvertently clicked on the link, and followed the succeeding instructions on the Facebook page, simply close the tab or page that you were directed to.



DANGER RATING

The site is currently not rated by any of the following tools:

Trend Micro Site Safety: Unrated and Untested

McAfee Site Advisor: Queued for testing

WOT: No result found



Disclaimer: I am not a security expert and I offer these instructions with no guarantees. Remember to keep your security software up to date!

As I passed along NLEX (North Luzon Expressway) last Thursday, about 2 days after Pedring hit Luzon, vast tracts of the province of Bulacan was still underwater, most of which were up to the roof of their houses. If you would like to help, the Philippine National Red Cross is assisting those affected.

I’ve always wondered what the Philippine’s leading newspaper would look like in gay speak. (original photo taken from Inquirer.net)