Hotels and pension houses in Cebu City are not affected by the papal visit from January 15 to January 18 as these establishments are already fully booked for the Sinulog weekend from January 16 until January 19.
Major hotels including Marco Polo Plaza Hotel already confirmed a full weekend for the annual festival which will draw in more domestic travellers and foreign tourists especially the Japanese and Korean groups.
Hotel general manager Julie Najar who is now also the new president of Hotel Resort and Restaurant Association of Cebu said they saw the same high demand and did not see any dip.
Some speculated that the visiting of Pope Francis in Manila and Leyte during that same period may affect arrivals in Cebu for Sinulog.
Najar said the players remain optimistic that tourist traffic for the Sinulog will remain high.
The guests mix checking in the major hotels is dominated by the domestic tourists, according to Najar and other hotel executives, adding that the trend has not changed over the last two years.
For Marco Polo Plaza Hotel their guests are predominantly Filipino.
“Those from other countries include tourists from the US and Australia, and they are actually more of the balikbayans. The Koreans and Japanese tourists are still the majority group for the foreign market during these period,” said Najar.
She added that the mix hasn’t changed, but perhaps the age group would be a little more different as the Pope’s visit in Manila and Tacloban will most likely pull the more senior Filipinos to Luneta on the 19th.
Waterfront Cebu City Hotel and Casino sales manager Gayle Moro also said they are fully booked for the Sinulog and did not notice any decline in demand for rooms in terms of the number of guests wanting to make reservations in their hotels.
Moro added that their guests are mostly domestic travellers from Manila and the neighboring provinces.
“Our foreign guests are mostly Japanese and Koreans,” he said.
Best Western Plux Lex Cebu sales and marketing director Janine Matig-a also confirmed full bookings for their hotel which is located alon Escario Street in Cebu.
“We expect the tourists to start coming in by next week. So far, we heard bookings remain high for all city hotels,” she said.
Best Western Plus Lex Cebu will host more guests from the US, Russia, Germany, Australia, Canada and Japan and about 40 percent domestic travellers.
Pension houses are usually the accomodation types that gets booked ahead like Pacific Pensionne which also confirmed full bookings since November of last year.
Based on figures from the Department of Tourism, there were 237,701 that visited Cebu in January last year, a 1.34 percent growth from only 234,517 in 2013.
The number of foreign tourists that visited in January last year declined by 10.65 percent from 119,112 in 2013 to only 107,646 last year.
Domestic tourists still grew by 11.3 percent with 129,369 last year.
In an earlier interview, HRRAC past president Cenelyn Manguilimotan said that Sinulog will always draw traffic to Cebu because it’s usually that time of year when people come to Cebu to visit relatives, families and keep their “panata.”
She said Sinulog is a religious event for many people who really make promises to attend every year.
Disclaimer: The comments uploaded on this site do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of management and owner of Cebudailynews. We reserve the right to exclude comments that we deem to be inconsistent with our editorial standards.
