The Department of Tourism (DOT) can boost its campaign if its convergence with other government agencies is maximized.

This was the suggestion made by Senators Juan Miguel Zubiri and Loren Legarda on Monday night during the plenary debates on the DOT’s proposed PHP3.670 billion budget for next year.

“It’s a low-hanging fruit. Tourism can bring in easily how many billions of dollars worth of income for our people, country, economy. I’m still making this appeal to the administration that they should do a cluster coordinating council amongst the different government departments,” Zubiri said.

He also suggested to focus the budget on the development of top tourism destinations instead of a “shotgun approach” which he said has lesser impact.

“Why don’t we get the 10 or 12 best tourist sites? Put all of our money and funding there and then after we’re done with that, we’ll work with other areas as well,” Zubiri said.

“No favoritism, I’m just saying that if you look at the number of tourists that go to these areas, you can tap it from there and then that’s what we concentrate our funding on for this year, for next year, and then do the same for the others,” he added.

The senator vowed to ask other government agencies like the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the Department of Transportation (DOTr) to push for more infrastructure projects needed to develop the tourism industry.

Legarda, who defended the DOT’s proposed budget, noted that the agency has existing convergence projects with the DPWH and DoTr, as well as other public-private partnership projects.

“There’s much to be desired because there’s so much potential. We are resource-rich and I agree, everyone has used that cliche, it’s a low hanging fruit,” she said.

For Legarda, infrastructure and connectivity are the main concerns of the tourism industry but admitted that due to limited fiscal space, the DOT was just given a small budget.

“But we’re not complaining, we are doing the best we can do given the limited fiscal space and that’s why it is a whole-of-government approach if the DoTr and the DPWH use the resources leading to tourist destinations, in your own words, effectively and efficiently, then it would benefit the Department of Tourism and all the programs that it has,” she clarified.

Legarda cited a report from the World Tourism Council that the Philippines was No. 1 in domestic tourism expenditures last year among its Southeast Asian neighbors.

“The Philippines was the biggest domestic tourism market in Southeast Asia in 2023 with USD52.1 billion or 32.9 percent share compared to [other] Association of Southeast Asian Nations,” she said.

The DOT and its attached agencies hurdled the Senate budget plenary deliberation with the budget of the Office of the Secretary amounting to PHP3.079 billion; Intramuros Administration with PHP145.714 million; National Parks Development Committee with PHP381.178 million; Philippine Commission on Sports Scuba Diving; with PHP24.434 million; and budgetary support to Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority with PHP40 million. (PNA)