Seamless travel

The lack of seamless travel connection is more of a turn off for tourists, according to one veteran hospitality executive, arguing that the safety issue is always a factor for any traveler to any country.

- MARIANNE GO

According to Lynette Ermac, senior vice president and head of sales and operations of Discovery Hospitality Corp., the safety issue for the Philippines is similar to what tourists also encounter in other Asian countries like Thailand and Vietnam.

Unfortunately, she pointed out, since we are an English-speaking country, most of our news is delivered or written in English, allowing for international dissemination and thus gets easily spread and understood.

In the case of Thailand and Vietnam, or any of our other non-English speaking neighbors, Ermac argues, their local news is not easily picked up because of the language barrier. In our case, when a crime incident or a negative news is reported about a foreign tourist in the Philippines, foreign wire organizations can easily pick up the negative report and immediately disseminate it around the globe.

Again, because we speak English, tourists are able to report about the crime incident and make a fuss because we can understand them. In other non-speaking countries, Caucasian foreign tourists would have to seek the assistance of their foreign embassies to communicate and most likely are settled quietly and efficiently without the incident leaking out to the local press.

I tend to agree with Ermac's opinion because we, as Asian tourists when we travel abroad, are also often the target of scam artists and pickpockets in our neighboring Asian nations, in India, Europe and America. Most nations know that Asian travelers like to travel with cash, unlike Caucasians who prefer credit cards. Asians are also well known as prolific shoppers, hence we walk around with a target on our head as soon as we arrive in another country.