A tour group market worth developing is the international bike groups market, said Alice Queblatin, Visayas Tourism Congress vice president for travel and tour sector.
In an interview yesterday, Queblatin said that aside from the rising interest in ecotourism products, the region is now starting to see some biking enthusiasts, usually in groups of 10 to 15, who stay longer than the usual leisure tourists.
“We have had bike tour groups already and they were even the ones who developed their route which includes Cebu, Bohol, Siquijor, Dumaguete or Negros,” she said.
These tourists come in groups and stay for at least 10 days in different areas along their route and spend more, she said.
They also bring their own bikes to every trip.
“They spend at least $150 each a day. We’ve been handling them for three years and now we’re starting to see more and more of them coming here,” she said.
While this tourist product is already popular in other countries in Asia like Vietnam and Malaysia, its potential is still underdeveloped and unrealized in the country, Queblatin said.
“Central Visayas has a very good positioning for this because we have the airport or the hub in Cebu and we are well interconnected to other provinces in the region,” she said.
The good thing about this activity is that the tourists don’t demand well-paved roads and, in fact, prefer a “wild ride” on unpaved and undeveloped roadways.
She said it’s partly the tourists’ way of enjoying nature while they are riding their bikes around different provinces in the region.
Most of the tourists come from European countries, like Germany, comprised by sports enthusiasts who are mostly medical professionals like dentists and doctors and whose ages range from 40 to 60 years old.
Aside from tourism, local communities that the tourists visit also benefit as the tourists usually adopt communities for their future charity works.
“They come back and do some community works that help the community so I think this is worth developing further,” she said.
Queblatin said that the region has also become a popular destination for international sporting events including Ironman 70.3 and tennis tournaments.
“I heard soon we’ll have the dragon boat race here. If that materializes, we are bound to benefit a lot from another huge traffic that will come here as participants and spectators,” she said.