Uncentralized information bugs Sagada town tourism

By Gina Dizon

SAGADA, Mountain Province -- Some 7,000  visitors arrived the previous weekend and clogged homestays and inns of this tourist town with some inns having to let their visitors sleep on the  floor.

Tourists came here due to National Heroes Day on Nov. 30 a non-working holiday on towards the weekend.  

Private homes opened up with some tourist guides leading visitors to houses in town.

Pacita  (not her real name) whose house is located  quite far from the inn-heavy section near the streets does not receive tourists but received guests anyway brought by a guide during the weekend. 

If a tourist guide favors a certain inn or homestay, these to be filled up for a night or more.

Sagada Inns and Homestays Association (SIHA) president Marina Aben-Biag  in an interview said some tourist guides handled five, 10 to 15 vans of  tourist-passengers brought to inns and homestays .

Some tour agencies have tourist guide fees included in their tour packages ranging from P1,800 to P4,000  per person for a night or two days package tour in town.

There are 115 registered inns and homestays in Sagada with an estimated 2,000 bed capacity,  Aben-Biag said.

With nearly 7,000 visitors the past weekend , one  wonders where visitors slept.

An inn had to accommodate late night comers who pleaded to sleep on the floor (with mattress) rather than sleep cold on the streets. So it is with other inns or houses.

There are unregistered homestays and the municipality is losing income due to this.

On top of it all is the bugging issue of a municipality which does not have a system and full control of how its tourism industry is run.

Centralized information about letting tourists know if they can come to this town had been a demand, considering their accommodation.

Tourists are led to registered inns and homestays or unregistered homes or to the hospital here when peak season comes. 

Registration

Undocumented tourists and homestays remain an issue. Aben-Biag  reminded homestays to  register time and again. 

During peak  tourism days, she said she  monitors homestays and inns if they are full.

“When inns and homestays  don’t have visitors, the owners  ask me and I direct  tourists who may be looking for  accommodation. But they don’t inform me when they are full,” she said.

The association however can only do what they can do as an organization.

Monitoring inns and homestays if they are full remains a function of the tourism office staffed with a tourism officer and the executive officer to issue fact-based advisories.

Apart from unregistered guests, unregistered homestays end up not contributing to local income.

Registration of inns and homestays is a provision of the municipality’s revised revenue code. Registration of all guests is a standing policy of the town. Implementation is another. 

Uncentralized info

Accurate data of the number of visitors here leaves much to be desired.

Some P7,000 tourists came the past weekend, treasury records bared as against a registered  P3,600 entries at the tourist information center.

With no monitoring and accurate info, the issuance of  evidence-based advisories in reminding tourists not to come to Sagada as inns and homestays if full is nil.

Allowing tourists to arrive in large numbers spell disaster to a small town which can only accommodate enough.

This, as accrediting homestays and inns remain a need, a job of the Dept.  of Tourism .

Tour agencies

Thee accurate data on many vans came to Sagada the past weekend. With 10-12 tourist passengers in a van, one can know how many visitors came apart from those who came in their private cars and travelled by  bus.

Not every tourist goes to Sumaguing Cave or Echo Valley. Checking tourist sites is a need to how many went there. As the public notes, Sagada’s tourism sites apart from Sumaguing Cave and Echo Valley ae a  free zone with tour vans freely cruising their way to sights located near the road. 

Letting tour agencies stay in parking lots and local vehicles to ferry tourists remain a need to be addressed by  the Sangguniang  Bayan so they could come up with an ordinance to this effect.

Local income

The municipal treasury collected  P6.5 million from tourists’ environmental fees  last year with environmental fees composing the biggest amount in the total local income of P10 million last year, treasury records reveal.

Where environmental fees, homestay registration, tourist guide registration are  ensured  shall  add to  local income of this  5th class municipality never lifted from its bottom level since then despite  flourishing tourism businesses.

Tourists  going to  Sumaguing Cave and Echo valley are the only sites having info centers and where tourists are checked if they have  registration fees. Other than that there are no info centers.

That means tourists may or may not have registered at the tourist information center and may not have gone to Sumaguing Cave or Echo  Valley.

A recent Dept. of Tourism – Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources and local government Unit tourism stakeholders meet recommended the manning of all  tourism sites in town.

These include Sumaguing Cave, Pongas Falls, Balangagan Cave, Marlboro Hills, Kiltepan Sunrise, Danum Lake/Sunset, Mt Ampakao, Bumod-ok Falls, Bokong Falls/Rice Terraces, Underground River, Echo valley/Hanging Coffins, and Lumyang burial cave.