19 October 2015 - Following the success of the first edition of its tourism seminar in Lisbon last year to promote to the Portuguese market the Philippines as a travel destination, the Philippine Embassy in Lisbon conducted the second edition of its tourism seminar on October 01 in Porto which is aimed at reaching out to travel agencies in the northern region of Portugal.
The seminar was conducted by the Embassy in collaboration with Quadrante, a Portuguese tourist operator, and Air France/KLM, and held at the Intercontinental Hotel Porto, Portugal. It was attended by around 50 travel agents representing 33 different travel agencies and tour operators in northern Portugal. Also present were the general sales agents of Air France/KLM and journalists.
The seminar’s objective was to present and promote the Philippines as a travel destination for the Portuguese market and to facilitate the development of linkages between Portuguese travel agencies and Philippine tour operators and tourist establishments so that tour packages for the Portuguese market can be developed and promoted by the participating Portuguese travel agencies to their Portuguese clients.
Commenting on the event, Philippine Ambassador to Portugal Philippe J. Lhuillier said, “When I assumed my post as Philippine Ambassador to Portugal in early 2013, one of my key activities for the Embassy is to aggressively promote Philippine tourism. I believe the Philippines offers a lot as a tourist destination and tourism is a vital sector for our country’s economic growth. The problem we often encounter here in Portugal is the lack of awareness about the Philippines and a lack of tour packages on offer for the Portuguese market.”
Ambassador Lhuillier further noted that, “We conduct these seminars as well as participate in tourism fairs here in Portugal as a way of addressing this problem. I am happy to say that following our increased promotion activities, statistics from the Philippine Department of Tourism on Portuguese tourist arrivals to the Philippines increased by 14% in 2014. However, those numbers are only 10% of the number of Portuguese tourists who travel to Southeast Asia. As you can see, there is considerable potential and further room for growing this market and the Philippine Embassy in Lisbon will be working hard to maximize this potential in support of our economic diplomacy objectives.”
The seminar began with opening remarks from Ambassador Lhuillier followed by a multi-media presentation by Quadrante and Air France/KLM to convince the travel agents why they should market the Philippines as a travel destination. The presentation also provided useful information for the travel agents such as how to get there and sample packages for specific tourist destinations in Luzon, the Visayas and Palawan. An 8-page catalog and information brochure in Portuguese was distributed to the seminar participants. The information used during the presentations and for the catalog/brochures were taken from materials provided by the Philippine Department of Tourism’s London Office.
That presentation was followed by a visual presentation by Portuguese photo-journalists Marco Pereira and Sara Wong, who shared their personal insights and experience about their travels to the Philippines. Mr. Pereira and Ms. Wong have done more than 30 articles on the Philippines in various Portuguese print publications since 2007. They talked about their very pleasant experience exploring and discovering the Philippines, at the same time showing photos they have taken to provide a visual reference for the seminar participants and a glowing endorsement of the Philippines as an excellent tropical tourist and vacation destination.
The “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” video of DOT was shown to conclude the seminar. This was followed by a brief cocktail and a dinner. Towards the end of the dinner, raffle prizes were donated, including a roundtrip airline ticket to the Philippines from Air France/KLM. END