14 March 2013 – The Philippine pavilion proved once again to be a crowd drawer at this year’s Internationale Tourismus-Borse (ITB) which took place from March 06 to 08 in Berlin.
The ITB Berlin is acknowledged as the world’s leading travel trade show attended by over a hundred ministers of tourism and state secretaries from around the world. The significant presence of such a high number of ranking officials has made ITB Berlin the world’s largest gathering of leading tourism representatives from the private and public sector.
For this year, the Philippine Department of Tourism (DOT) selected Albay Province as the Philippine highlight destination and the DOT conducted a sustained marketing and global brand wareness campaign to advertise the Philippines in the city of Berlin for the duration of the ITB.
Congressman Florencio Miraflores, Chairperson of the House Committee on Tourism, Congresswoman Thelma Almario, Vice Chairperson of the House Committee on Appropriations and Congressman Alfredo Garbin Jr, Vice Chairperson of the House Committee on Tourism, led the Philippine delegation composed of DOT officials, Albay provincial government officials, local tour operators and hotel and resort owners and managers.
The ITB Berlin served as the perfect spring board for the Philippine Embassy to hold a press conference to announce the signing by President Benigno S. Aquino III of Republic Act 10376, rationalizing the taxes paid by international airlines and shipping carriers in the Philippines. Through this law, the Philippine Government aims to improve the country’s international air transport connectivity which is the most critical infrastructure linking the Philippines to the global tourism market.
The Philippine Embassy also announced that an International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) validation mission had pledged to recommend the lifting of the significant safety concerns previously issued to the Philippines after an ICAO audit team noted the corrective measures undertaken by Philippine authorities on aviation safety. The favorable audit results are expected to be taken into consideration by the European Union (EU) and theUnited States (US) as they conduct their own independent evaluation of aviation safety concerns in the coming months.
Ambassador Natividad also expressed confidence that these two measures will accelerate tourism arrivals in the country, and help meet the target of 10 million tourist arrivals by 2016.
ITB is where national and local tour operators, resort owners, travel-related companies and trade visitors converge to learn of the latest worldwide tourism trends. This year’s event featured 10,086 exhibitors from 188 countries, and as many as 110,000 trade visitors came to the Messe Exhibition Grounds in Berlin, 43 per cent of whom were foreigners.
On the eve of the opening day, the Philippine Embassy in Berlin hosted a merienda cena to welcome the Philippine participants.
Ambassador Natividad hosted a dinner at the Ambassador’s residence in honor of the visiting Congressional delegation and DOT officials.
Based on DOT statistics, tourism arrivals from Europe reached 208,000 for 2012, with Germany, France and the Netherlands topping the list of visitor arrivals from the EU. Total visitor arrivals from Germany for 2012 surpassed 67,000, reflecting a 5% increase from the previous year. Germany continues to be the number one source of tourist arrivals in Western Europe, and the second highest tourism market in all of Europe, following the United Kingdom. END