Beloved Slogan Returns With Upgraded Hashtag; Boracay Sand Still Pink; Tourists Still Unavoidable

Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat

MANILA, PHILIPPINES — The Department of Tourism has re-launched the “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” campaign, which has been launched, relaunched, enhanced, digitally transformed, and reinvigorated at regular intervals since its original introduction in 2012, with officials describing the latest iteration as “fresh,” “modern,” and “reaching new audiences,” three phrases that the campaign has also been described with on multiple previous occasions.

The Slogan That Will Not Be Retired

The “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” campaign, which was itself adapted from a Swiss tourism slogan (a detail that the campaign’s architects have always acknowledged and that critics have always enjoyed), achieved genuine success in its original 2012 iteration: it was simple, localized, lent itself to user-generated content in a period when social media was beginning to dominate marketing, and captured something real about the Philippine travel experience, which is characterized by a warmth of welcome and a variety of natural beauty that travel writers have consistently documented.

The slogan’s subsequent iterations have been more uneven, partly because the original campaign’s success was a product of its moment — the early social media era, when participatory marketing was new and the Philippine tourism sector was experiencing genuine growth — and partly because “more fun” is a comparative claim that invites questions about what, specifically, the comparison is, and whether the comparison holds across the diverse range of traveler experiences that a destination of 7,641 islands necessarily produces.

What Philippine Tourism Actually Offers

The case for the Philippines as a travel destination is strong and does not require a slogan to make. The country contains some of the world’s finest dive sites, including the Tubbataha Reef and the dive sites around Palawan, which marine biologists describe as among the most biodiverse marine environments on Earth. Its beaches include Boracay’s famous white sand, the long coastlines of Siargao that have built the island’s reputation as a surfing destination, and hundreds of others that international tourism has not yet discovered.

The cultural richness of the archipelago — Spanish colonial heritage, indigenous traditions across dozens of ethno-linguistic groups, American-era architecture, Chinese commercial influence, and a contemporary urban culture centered in Manila that is unlike any other city in Southeast Asia — provides a depth that beach tourism alone does not capture. Filipino hospitality, which is not a tourist board invention but a documented cultural characteristic that travelers across centuries have remarked upon, remains one of the country’s genuine competitive advantages in a region of strong tourism alternatives.

The Department of Tourism budget, which funds the campaign alongside actual tourism development activities, has been a recurring discussion point in budget deliberations, with tourism stakeholders consistently arguing that the marketing allocation is insufficient relative to the sector’s economic importance and relative to the budgets of competitor destinations in the region.

The Boracay Question

Any Philippine tourism discussion necessarily includes Boracay, the island that was temporarily closed by government order in 2018 for environmental rehabilitation, reopened after a six-month intensive cleanup, and has since been managing the tension between the tourism development that funds the local economy and the environmental carrying capacity that the island’s appeal depends upon.

Boracay is a case study in both what can go wrong with unmanaged tourism — the rehabilitation closure was necessitated by wastewater systems that had degraded the island’s coral and water quality to the point of public health concern — and what can go right when government intervention, however disruptive in the short term, addresses a problem before it becomes irreversible.

The island’s current status is genuinely improved from its pre-rehabilitation condition, with better wastewater management, restored beach zones, and reduced overcrowding. Whether the improvement is permanent depends on the management decisions made as tourism volume recovers to pre-rehabilitation levels and tourism development pressure resumes, which it has.

The Sustainable Tourism Aspiration

Every Philippine tourism campaign in recent memory has included the word “sustainable,” which reflects both the genuine recognition that the Philippines’ tourism assets are natural environments that can be degraded by the visitors they attract and the somewhat less genuine reality that sustainable tourism principles are inconsistently implemented across a destination as decentralized as 7,641 islands governed by municipalities with varying capacity and commitment.

The aspiration is correct. The implementation is a work in progress, like most things in a developing country managing the tension between economic development and environmental protection with resources that are less than the tension requires. The slogan, in this context, is doing work that should probably be accompanied by more investment in the infrastructure behind the smile: the sewage systems, the solid waste management, the transport connections, and the environmental enforcement that make tourism sustainable rather than just aspirationally described as such.

“It’s More Fun in the Philippines” is true, for the right traveler in the right place at the right moment. The campaign’s job is to find those travelers. The infrastructure’s job is to make sure those moments remain possible. The two jobs are related, and the campaign is currently ahead.

Philippine tourism coverage, Manila travel satire, and Boracay observations: Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.

More travel satire: The Onion and The Beaverton.

The Infrastructure Behind the Smile

Sustainable tourism in the Philippines requires infrastructure investments that are less photogenic than beach campaigns but more foundational to the tourist experience: reliable power in island destinations, clean water systems that protect both tourists and residents, solid waste management that prevents the beaches from being reclaimed by the trash of their own visitors, and inter-island transport links that allow tourists to reach destinations beyond the primary gateways without spending more time in transit than at the destination. Siargao, which has grown rapidly as a surf and lifestyle destination and which the pandemic paradoxically elevated by giving it time to develop its identity without the volume of visitors that was beginning to overwhelm it, is a case study in what happens when infrastructure development lags destination growth: the island’s appeal attracts more visitors than its systems can comfortably support, generating exactly the environmental pressures that degraded Boracay in the previous decade. The Department of Tourism’s role in sustainable tourism is not primarily to market the destination but to advocate within government for the infrastructure investments that keep the destination worth marketing. The slogan is the easy part. The sewage system is the hard part. The hard part is currently behind schedule, as hard parts tend to be.

More Philippine tourism satire: The Onion and The Beaverton.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/