DESPITE the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) and the war in Iraq, tourist arrivals in Cebu grew 1.39 percent in the first six months of the year to 427,242.

Industry players also expressed optimism about better prospects for the second half of the year.

According to the Department of Tourism 7, domestic tourism boosted the overall figures after the number of local visitors to the island-province grew 6.39 percent to 304,735 during the period from 286,422 in the same period last year.

The number of foreign travelers fell over nine percent to 122,507, with Japan still accounting for the most number of foreign tourists at 34,957, a nearly 10 percent decline from 38,693 in the previous year.

Close on its heels was Korea, which saw a 16.68 percent increase in arrivals to 31,146.

As expected, there were huge declines in tourist arrivals from Hong Kong and Taiwan at 49 percent and 59 percent, respectively. These areas were severely hit by the Sars virus, which first surfaced outside of mainland China in February.

Better days

But tourism players were seeing improved prospects for the rest of the year.

Philippine Airlines Visayas sales and services assistant vice president Celso Dapo said he had noticed an increase in the number of people from Thailand visiting the Philippines.

“There has been a growing interest on the part of Thai people to travel to the Philippines, and in particular to Cebu,” he told Sun.Star.

He could not ascertain, however, whether this was due to the Asean Hip-Hop Pass promotion launched by the Asean Tourism Association to boost intra-Asean tourism traffic from Aug. 1 to Oct. 31.

Dapo said there were many promotions available in the market today, including PAL’s own “Swing Around Philippines” promotion.

In a sign that the travel market may be recovering, the PAL executive said the flag carrier even had difficulty booking a group of Thais who wanted to stay at the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel (WCCH) last month because it was full.

WCCH press relations manager Charisse Que admitted that the hotel had been fully booked lately.

“We’ve had a lot of conventions,” Que said, like the recently concluded 53rd Junior Chamber International Asia Pacific Conference.

The hotel is now preparing to host a National Liga ng mga Barangay gathering on Sept. 7, she said.

Que said tour groups from other Asian countries were also returning to Cebu. CTL