Cebu City to offer coastal, mountain tours as new tourism draws

CEBU CITY -- The Cebu City Tourism Commission (CCTC) headed by Jocelyn Pesquera has laid out plans to develop tourism products such as coastal tours and agri-based mountain experiences as the new tourism draws when the industry recovers next year.

Pesquera bared in the Mugstoria Ta, an online conversation hosted by the Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas (OPAV)Tuesday that the CCTC is looking to take advantage of the city’s long coastline stretching from the South Road Properties (SRP) which is rapidly unfolding its commercial developments to the city’s ports in the downtown areas.

“This also bodes well for the redevelopment project for the Carbon Public Market which has been part of a lifestyle landmark tourism concept and could soon become an improved tourist attraction in Cebu City,” Pesquera added.

She went on that the development works for the coastline tour project took off in 2020 and the City is further developing mountain tours which are now being prioritized to offer tourists more outdoor experiences.

In recent years, Cebu City had seen the rise of farm tourism sites in the mountain barangays that give travelers an escape from the bustling city life, Pesquera added that they plan to expand tour routes that would explore Cebu City’s historical connections to the American and Japanese era.

“We’re not limiting our tour routes to the Spanish era.  We have structures here that trace back to the American and Japanese era.  We just need to develop this with the help of the creative industry,” she said.

According to OPAV secretary Michael Lloyd Dino that coming up with innovative tourism product is a good move and he urged local government units (LGUs) and tourism stakeholders to think out of the box and strictly implement health protocols to ensure tourism sites remain safe for all.

Dino said that they must come up with products that would bring back tourists without sacrificing health protocols because the reopening of tourist destinations would create immediate impact on the community.

Aside from hotels, resorts and restaurants, many businesses such as transport, food suppliers and souvenir subsectors rely on tourism on a robust tourism sector.  According to the DOT figures that for the first six months of 2020, the total foregone income for the tourism sector of Central Visayas had reached US$ 713 million (around P35.5 billion).

Meanwhile, CCTC commissioner Butch Carungay underscored the contribution of the creative sector to bring tourism back to the forefront adding that the creative community is closely working with the tourism industry on how they can further collaborate.

Carungay is among those in the private sector with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI-7) that have worked hard for the designation of Cebu City as a “Creative City of Design.”  

He explained that CCTC is now exploring the prospect of experiential creative tourism in Cebu City, to diversity from the traditional mass cultural tourism, which mostly involves tangible heritage sites.

Carungay noted that while there aren’t concrete plans yet, they are working to get this moving forward. Part of the plan is to create tours that allow tourists to discover and develop their own creative potential and give more flexible and authentic experiences which can be co-created between the host and the tourist. 

“We just need to unlock synergies from, already, the intertwined sectors,” Carungay said that Cebu City must take advantage of its designation as a Creative City by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to further its tourism appeal.

The city’s vibrant creative scene is already given, and it’s just a matter of bringing this to its advantage by integrating it into the tourism sector, Carungay point out.