By Romy Teruel
Bohol Sunday PostMore than 5 million tourist arrival in one year. Is that possible? Yes if you are in Phuket, Thailand. Actually for last year Phuket registered 5,005,653 tourist arrivals aaccording to Nanthasiri Ronnasiri of the Southern Office of the Tourism Authority of Thailand based in Phuket.
In all, Dir. Sumalee Samphaorat of Airport Services Division of Phuket International Aairport said, that required them 270 domestic flights and 293 international flights per month to bring all those tourists to Phuket. They have as many as 96 chartered flights a month because their regular flights are no longer sufficient to meet the demand of visitors. After being devastated by a killer tsunami in 2004 that is quite a miracle.
Yet Phuket is not extraordinarily endowed complared to Bohol. What they have that attract visitors, Bohol is not far behind. Thais are a smiling and courteous people but so are Boholanos. They have the beaches as fine and white as powder, but so does Bohol. They have their magnificent Buddhist temples, but so does Bohol with its ancient catholic stone churches and other religious artifacts. They have lush mountains but they don't compare to the mountains of Bohol. They have beautiful islets and vibrant dive sites but they don't compare to Bohol islets and dive sites like Cabilao and Balicasag.
Moreover Bohol has nature's miracle in the chocolate hills which Phuket doesn't haveand neither do they have the tarsier that captivates the heart of royalties like Prince Charles.
In size, Bohol is twice larger than Phuket, three times bigger in population and more than twice in number of local government units. Although both are islands that boast of coastal waters that teem with fish and other marine products.
Yet even as the number one tourist destination of the Philippines, Bohol's tourist arrival in 2007 was only over 600,000 - a small slice of the over 3 million arrivals for the whole Philippines.
Phuket's top ten visitors are Australians, Britons, Swedish, Koreans, Germans, Chinese, Russians, Japanese, Americans, and Malaysians who contributed ThB94.239 million to the income of Phuket for 2007 alone.
The mayor of Patong municipality, which was severely damaged by tsunami in 2004, had to order a suspension of hotel construction because the town has reached its maximum carrying capacity.
Nevertheless, there are now 628 hotels and resorts in Phuket with a total number of 37,546 rooms.
How did Phuket attract so many tourists and visitors?
I will discuss this in the report of the team of Boholanos in the tourism industry who went on a five-day benchmarking tour of Phuket early this month. The whole activity was part of an ongoing Training on Tourism Services Standards funded by the Philippines-Australia Human Resource Development Facility (PAHRDF) with tourism services standards for Bohol.
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