With hotels and restaurants fully-booked and souvenir shops having a field day, the 2016 Cobra IronMan 70.3 Asia-Pacific Championship is turning out to be another economic gold mine for Cebu especially host city, Lapu-Lapu.
Imee Yu, general manager of Soto Grande Hotel & Resort, said that this year, hotel bookings are more advanced. While they still had available rooms in January last year, this year, rooms are fully booked as early as August 2015.
“Before last year’s participants checked out, they already reserved rooms for this year’s IronMan,” Yu said.
Yu revealed that around 80 percent of their guests are IronMan participants since their hotel is very close to the venue.
Lapu-Lapu City Tourism Chief Hembler Mendoza said that the increased number of tourists can be attributed to the increased number of participants, which has reached 3,000, and add in the families, relatives and friends who want to see the event.
To make this year’s Cobra IronMan more exciting, colorful miniature boats are trailed along the race course in Lapu-Lapu City, idle walls are painted white, and the Discovery Bay in Mangal, the turning-point for the 21k run, is embellished with banderitas.
The host city has also prepared scene-stealing side events.
Men will be cheering for their women on Aug. 5 in the “IronGirl Dressed by Running Skirts 5k Run,” a fun-run open to females 12 years old and above.
There is also the Pyro-technique competition which will commence after the Carbo-Load dinner on Aug. 5 and the IronKids competition on Aug. 6 which is for kids aged 6 to 14.
Some 200 colorful vintas will also line the swim course, said Mendoza.
Then on Sunday, triathletes will be cheered on by cheer dance performers from Lapu-Lapu City’s different high schools whose students will camp out in Discovery Bay on Saturday./ USJ-R Intern Dafne N. Wenceslao