Tourism, Security and Safety From Theory to Practice

particular locality. Gordon demanded that the media and government advisories
specify the problem areas as opposed to calling the entire destination into disre-
pute. Gordon’s demand for specificity in both media coverage and government
travel advisories resonated with the governments and tourism officials in many
other countries in SE Asia that shared similar problems after the Bali bombing.
The Philippines inbound tourism industry was a collateral victim of the 2003
SARS outbreak despite the fact that the country was virtually free of the disease.
Media-magnified fears of SE Asia as a potential risk area for SARS impacted SE
Asian countries irrespective of the incidence or absence of SARS.
Richard Gordon’s appointment to the chairmanship of PATA in 2003 gave him
a powerful voice well beyond the Philippines. He used his regional power base in
both PATA and ASEAN to exert pressure on the World Tourism Organization to
take a global tourism industry approach to the issue of government travel advi-
sories and received support from many countries that shared the problems the
Philippines itself had encountered. In early 2004 the WTO’s Secretary General,
Francesco Frangialli, called on the WTO to initiate discussions through the UN for
a global approach to realistic government travel advisories. The WTO obtained UN
status in 2003, which enabled them to officially propose a global set of standards
on travel advisories to the UN.
The WOW Philippines campaign involved a mixture of marketing campaigns,
travel industry training and education, media and travel agency familiarization
visits, and the incorporation of WOW Philippines within PATA’s Project Phoenix.
A unique feature of the campaign was the incentive scheme offered to expatriate
Filipinos to make a home visit accompanied by citizens of their host nation. In
effect, the more citizens Filipinos could identify as visiting because of their indi-
vidual promotion, the cheaper the home visit would be. The expatriate program
was designed as an attractive bonus/incentive scheme for the many Filipino citi-
zens working abroad on low incomes with families in the Philippines. Provided
they could identify a given number of tourists, the home visit for the expatriate
would be free of charge. As Filipino nationals traditionally represented 5% of the
inbound tourist market during the 1990s, the bonus scheme was a potentially effec-
tive program to bolster inbound tourism numbers. In the period of 2002–2003
overseas Filipino arrivals represented the second fastest growing sector (up 19.8%)
of an inbound tourism market that as a whole actually dropped by 2.3% between
2002 and 2003 (Philippine Department of Tourism, 2003).
Three SE Asia Tourism Recovery Campaigns
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The overall concept of WOW Philippines was expected to be statistically sig-
nificant during 2004 and early indications for 2004 already indicated a strong
return to inbound tourism growth. The overall market for the Philippines remained
steady during 2003 despite the collateral problems of SARS and the more press-
ing problem of terrorism-focused negative travel advisories. The total inbound
tourism figures for 2003 were 1.907 million tourists compared to 1.932 million
tourists for 2002, representing a drop of 1.3%, considerably less than most other
SE Asian countries.
Of the Philippines major source markets, slight declines in US and Japanese
tourists were offset by growth from South Korea. However, in 2003 the Philippines
suffered drops in arrivals from significant SARS-affected source markets: Hong
Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Outbound tourism from these three countries was
heavily reduced during the period of the SARS outbreak period (March–July 2003)
due to entry restrictions imposed by tourism receiving countries including the
Philippines.