Two Genuinely Free Things On Offer On Panglao Island
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Image courtesy John Smart
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In this modern age of deceptive advertising and spin, finding two genuinely free things on offer on Panglao Island was a very pleasant surprise. Mostly, free things are built into the price of something that you have already made the commitment to purchase, i.e. you have already paid for it and the label “free” is actually a blatant deception. Tourist incentives are rarely genuinely free because tourists, by definition, are alien to the place and most frequently display a lack of intelligence by not investigating the real cost of an item or service in advance.
At the Billabong Hotel on Panglao Island, along the road to Alona Beach, I chanced upon a sign on the bar that read “Free Introduction To Scuba”
Intrigued, I asked Ms. Leani, the jolly owner of the Billabong Hotel, “what is the catch with the free introduction to scuba?”. She replied, “no catch . . . if you stay at the Billabong Hotel and you want an introduction to scuba diving then we make a call and the next day a dive instructor will be here at our swimming pool”. Of course, the dive shop that supplies the dive instructor hopes you will be so enthralled with your free introduction to scuba that you will want to pay for a full scuba diving course but there is absolutely no obligation on your part to sign up, ergo it is genuinely free.
A little further down the road I saw a sign promoting Calypso Resort, advertising “rooms at Php 650 – with free motorcycle”. I wondered how one might use a free Honda motorcycle in a Php 650 room so, that evening, I followed the signs. Having walked a kilometer or so down a rough, crushed-coral-stone road and turning numerous corners, I finally found Calypso Resort . . . just 30 meters from the beach, delightfully surrounded by bountiful trees and with its own private swimming pool, bar and restaurant.
Calypso Resorts’s Php 650 rooms (high season Php 750) were quite adequate for on-a-tight-budget water sports enthusiasts – clean linen, fans (not air-conditioned) and en-suite showers – but I failed to see the attraction of driving around the room on a free Honda motorcycle. I asked how the free motorcycle was an additional incentive over the already modest (compared to all others within at least three kilometers in either direction) room rates. The answer of course had nothing to do with in-room Evel Knievel impersonations but had to do with the fact that getting transport out from Calypso Resort, to go anywhere else, presented too much of a challenge that people would not come to stay in the first place; offering the free Honda motorcycle ensures that Calypso Resort keep their rooms and restaurant full for most of the year.
To be complete I should add that only the “use of” the motorcycle is free – the user is expected to keep the motorcycle’s fuel tank topped up out of his/her own pocket and, of course, the Honda motorcycle remains the property of Calypso Resort at all times. [why do I emphasize “Honda”? it’s 4-stroke, thus far more environment friendly than its wasteful, inefficient, polluting 2-stroke cousins]
These two experiences got me thinking: is there a connection between offering (or not offering) genuinely free things (or at least a genuinely honest deal) and the growth (or decline) in tourism numbers in a given location?
The week before my journey to Bohol and Panglao Island I had traveled from Manila to the established resort town of Puerto Galera, where tourist numbers have declined in recent years, especially in the low-season. The ferry prices were still at an all-time high and apparently all the ferries had been struck down with the dreaded jeepney disease (“I know there is a published schedule but I will go when I have enough passengers and not before”), the tricycle drivers were less negotiable (“because there are fewer tourists”) and almost none of the beach resorts were offering really special deals (“because our overheads are the same even if there are fewer customers”).
Is it possible that established tourist destinations like Bauang, Anilao, Puerto Galera and Moalboal are seeing falling visitor numbers because they have become myopic and insensitive to the aspirations of their prospective customers?
If competition from tourist destinations is blossoming in other corners of the Philippines, and thus luring customers away from the established tourist destinations, then maybe both the public & private sectors at these established tourist destinations need to partner, take stock and look at their overall, deliverable package of infrastructure & specific product inventory.
In my experience: good news travels as fast as bad news; and, bad news tends to travel wider. All news in the 21st century travels relative to the bandwidth available at the nearest Internet node. If the established tourist destinations started to offer some tangible incentives (and weed out the known disincentives) then more of the tourists that they do attract would pass on the good news within their own social networks and potential networked tourists would not be inclined to experiment farther afield to get their vacation fix – there is nothing better than a qualified referral.
One small example of what could be changed from Puerto Galera: it used to be that Minolo Shipping Lines (the Golden fleet) would almost always depart on-time from Batangas Pier, while the other services out of Batangas (especially the Blue fleet) were renowned for frequently leaving an hour or more later than their published departure time. As a result I, and others of my acquaintance, have frequently, specifically in newsletters & blogs, actively encouraged everyone to use Minolo’s Golden fleet. However, based on most recent experiences, the Golden fleet leaving Batangas has become as insensitive to the needs of its passengers as the Blue fleet, and now frequently delay their departure times just to grab a few of extra passengers (30 minutes late for the sake of two extra passengers on the most recent occasion). And I have written about this on the Internet to the detriment of the Minolo Shipping Lines’ previous good reputation. Now, I can’t see any ferry company offering a free service to attract passengers but leaving on-time would free a greater part of the day for all of the passengers aboard and some of these passengers will spend some of that free time to blog and twit of their good experience.
Hopefully, publication of these two free things on offer on Panglao Island may motivate the rest of the nation to look beyond their laurels and attract more World travelers. Well done Billabong and Calypso.
Links:
Billabong Hotel website
Calypso Resort website