We go to the Philippines every year as part of our annual vacation to visit family and friends. During these visits, we would check out new and beautiful places.
In January 2017, we went to that awful tourist trap, Boracay, for a niece’s wedding. We did NOT enjoy it at all (and you could not pay us to go back there, ever), mainly because we could see it was already a nightmare waiting to happen due to the lack of a sewage system. This was very evident from the algal growth all over the beach.
President Duterte, for good reason, closed Boracay, so it could be cleaned up. And now, supposedly, Boracay will be open for tourism once again.
Last month, we went to Oslob, the latest Philippine tourist trap, to see the whale sharks. Yes, it was good fun, but again, we noticed the algal growth on the beach.
If the Philippines is ever going to develop sustainable tourism venues, there is a definite need to make sure the infrastructure is in place to deal with thousands of tourists every day, translating into millions of tourists every year, as we saw in Boracay and now Oslob.
If money is needed to upgrade the sewage infrastructure in these places, charge local and foreign tourists additional fees—something that is already being done in the whale shark operations. That business is already raking in millions of pesos. Don’t let it be another shortsighted venture.
ENRICO I. NERI, pareneri@hotmail.com, and ANN POBUTSKY, pobutsky@hawaii.edu