Students from Abellana National High School perform during the opening salvo of the Sinulog 2015 celebration earlier this January. (CDN PHOTO/LITO TECSON)
Anticipating the arrival of thousands of visitors for the Sinulog celebration next month, organizers are asking Cebu hotel operators not to jack up their room rates and to accommodate as many guests as they can.
Ricky Ballesteros, executive director of the Sinulog Foundation Inc. (SFI), said that keeping room rates affordable is one way of encouraging foreign and local tourists to keep coming back.
This early, many Cebu City hotels are fully booked for January, making it difficult to get rooms for contest judges who are coming for the Jan. 17 Sinulog grand parade.
“We were able to book them in a hotel but in Mandaue City,” he said.
Ballesteros said suspended Cebu City mayor Michael Rama, who is also chairman of the Sinulog Foundation Inc. is calling for a meeting soon with the Hotel Restaurant Resorts Association of
Cebu (HRRAC) to seek their help in plans to rehabilitate the Fuente Osmena circle and the Sinulog carousel route.
The planned rehabilitation of the park and rotunda is expected to cost about P7 million.
“We are asking the support of hotels because we also need to raise money for Sinulog activities to make it attractive to all visitors and tourist including the Cebuanos,” he said.
He said hotels after all benefit from peak crowds of visitors and tourists who come to Cebu for the annual celebration.