THE Tourism Promotions Board said it is hoping to generate sales leads at the Philippine Travel Exchange (PHITEX) 2024 exceed the year-earlier level.
“Last year, our sales leads were over P250 million, so, crossing fingers, we hope that we will do better this year despite the typhoon,” TPB Chief Operating Officer Maria Margarita M. Nograles said on the sidelines of the event on Wednesday.
PHITEX is the biggest government-organized travel trade show in the country, in which the TPB brings global buyers to the Philippines.
“It is really a key program of the TPB … This year, we have 87 buyers, and we set up business-to-business meetings with them to meet our private-sector partners,” Ms. Nograles said.
The buyers include destination management companies, tour operators, and travel agencies, while the sellers are composed of private-sector associates of the TPB.
“We have what we call the TPB Membership Program that hosts all our private-sector partners,” she said.
“If TPB is the marketing arm of the Philippine Department of Tourism (DoT) in charge of our 13 key markets around the world in meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions (MICE), our private-sector partners are our sales force,” she added.
For this year, she said that the buyers will be coming from 20 countries, including representatives from the Middle East, while 115 private-sector partners joined.
Ms. Nograles said buyers are looking for more experiences when they travel.
“They are really looking to see more experiential travel like (encounters with) indigenous communities and our culture, experiences like learning a skill such as cooking,” she said.
In particular, DoT Region 10 representative Marie Elaine Salvana-Unchuan said that the department is looking to offer photography-based night diving experiences at the dive festival in Camiguin this month. — Justine Irish D. Tabile