So we’re very, very close. Two million coming, almost 2 million — the actual number is 1.98, but I like round figures rather than edges. Two million tourists in 2024 is a whole lot, isn’t it?
It is a lot, when you consider that, as of the last Philippine census, the entirety of the Cordillera region has around 2.4 million people in totality. That means that we’ve had almost as many tourists as we’ve had people who live here in 2024.
Tourists definitely come with money, and here in Baguio, as many gripes as we may have with the tourist caste taking precedence over the resident caste of late, it is an undeniable fact that tourism accounts for a significant chunk of our income.
The follow-up questions here include whether that tourism money is sufficiently benefiting the average resident or if all that tourist money is going to only the top cut, to the establishments and corporations big enough to scoop up visitor cash. Big hotels. Mall chains. Established tourist spots.
Average residents may be split on this — anyone not directly tied to the tourism industry, so people operating local businesses, employees for companies who could care less about tourists, residents and students with no particular ties to the sector — these people would struggle to visualize or verbalize the benefits of tourism to them, while the negatives are extremely easy to.
The follow-up questions here include whether that tourism money is sufficiently benefiting the average resident or if all that tourist money is going to only the top cut
(Who among us hasn’t complained of tourist traffic, garbage output, price hikes, gentrification?)
Especially if you consider that, as of 2023, Baguio saw 1.3 million tourists, give or take, and in that year, the region had a total tourist arrival of around 1.6 million. The lion’s share of tourists — and tourist money — consolidated in a plot of land a small fraction of the entire region. The millennium project. The empty lot.
The government hasn’t been blind to this, and the Department of Tourism acknowledges this fact as a priority. For the past decade or so, the narrative has been “we need to pull tourism away from Baguio and into the rest of Cordillera.”
Has it been working? Well, eh. Tourism’s getting better across all of the region, but it isn’t as if Baguio’s share has been shrinking, it’s more that everyone’s numbers have been going up.
A difficulty with tourism is that it’s hard to grow inorganically. No matter how much we can locally brag about the special bit of our home, tourism requires that the product, the place, appeal to tourists.
Baguio, for instance, was built for recreation, but its appeal isn’t that it was designated as a recreational base, but rather that it provided a climate and vibe that is hard to get elsewhere and is fairly accessible (through multiple connection points).
Think of the pristine beauty of Apayao for instance. So many tourists would enjoy that slice of ecotourism, but then you have to think about how hard it is to get there.
Spreading it around is going to take a little more tickling, a little more finesse.
But yes, spread it.
