How do you sell a country where the allure of pristine beaches, a diverse culture and hospitable people is overshadowed by relentless news of kidnappings, insurgency and calamities?
Ask Richard Gordon, the Philippine tourism minister tasked to put the Southeast Asian archipelago on the itinerary of visitors fuelling the multi-billion-dollar global travel industry.
PHOTO: AP
"I do have the most difficult job, but I have a different way of looking at it. I look at it as a challenge that I must surmount," Gordon said during a recent trip to Singapore, where he signed an accord for joint tourism promotion by the two countries.
Undaunted by a measly budget that is equivalent to just one advertising blitz by some of its neighbors, the Philippines' travel salesman is confident he can bring in the visitors through a novel marketing strategy.
His weapon: a sales force of seven million Filipino workers scattered worldwide.
Gordon has launched a program to tap them as "tourism volunteers" to convince friends, bosses and acquaintances to visit their homeland.
Each volunteer is urged to convince at least one tourist a month to visit the Philippines, where the visitor will be entitled to shopping and hotel discounts and other incentives.
The volunteer in turn earns bonus points for each tourist he sends home. The points can be accumulated to earn discounts for duty-free shopping.
The volunteer who sends the most tourists will get a US$10,000 cash prize at the end of 2002.
While offering a host of attractions and being one of Asia's most vibrant cultures, the Philippines has been largely off the tourism trail, thanks to negative publicity after a spate of kidnappings and a Muslim separatist rebellion in the southern part of the country.
News datelined Manila of typhoons and floods, as well as corruption in the government, often hogs international headlines.
The impact is telling. Only 1.8 million tourists visited the Philippines last year, compared to between seven and 13 million arrivals for Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore.
But Gordon is undaunted.
"I don't think it's hard to sell the Philippines because we have enough destinations.
"We are mixed -- we have culture, history, nature, adventure, sun, underwater, sea, beautiful vistas and the people are great," said Gordon, a charismatic, fast-talking former mayor once considered a contender for the country's presidency.
And the negative image?
"Perception can be shattered once you get there. The biggest key to reformatting of that perception is that we have the seven million people abroad.
"They are all productive, kind, generous, they are all happy people and hospitable. That's the same way we are in our country," he said.
Disputing concerns that the country is unsafe, Gordon noted that the bandit group Abu Sayyaf, which still holds two American hostages and several Filipinos, is confined to the extreme southern portion of the Philippines, which has over 7,000 islands
And Manila has signed a ceasefire as part of peace talks with the largest Muslim separatist group, he said.
A syndicate kidnapping Singaporean businessmen in Manila has been busted, with the masterminds -- also Singaporeans -- arrested.
The kidnappings of ethnic Chinese businessmen were mostly planned by their colleagues and the dwindling communist insurgents have not kidnapped any tourists, Gordon said.
But armed with a budget of only US$660,000, the minister knows he cannot go on a major advertising blitz.
Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore -- which are reaping a bonanza from tourism -- have annual war chests ranging between 45 million dollars to 70 million dollars each.
Asked what lessons the Philippines can learn from its neighbors, he said: "That tourism is the number one business in the world. It's a sunshine industry."
Does he worry that his efforts might be scuppered by the next kidnapping case?
"If I worried about that, then I would not be able to do my job. I don't put fear between my objectives. In fact, I'd rather make fear my friend," the 56-year-old lawyer said.
From Gordon, this may not be an empty boast.
When US troops withdrew from a strategic naval base in Subic Bay north of Manila in 1992, fears were raised of massive unemployment.
With the area already ravaged by the massive eruption of Pinatubo volcano a year earlier, there were also concerns that the infrastructure left by the Americans would go to waste.
But Gordon, then mayor of Olongapo City adjacent to Subic, raised an army of young volunteers who cleaned up the base and guarded it from looters, clearing the way for its conversion into a showcase industrial zone.
"In our country, they always say `Oh, I don't have any money, poor little me I'm gonna cry, nobody loves me.' I don't believe in pity parties. So I have accepted this job and I'll have to do the best I can," he said.
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