 Over the last few years, the tourism industry has been at the center of all international efforts to strengthen economies, create employment, alleviate poverty and stimulate development. PCCI therefore identified tourism as a sunrise industry that will serve as a vital tool for national economic development. PCCI recognized the urgency of leapfrogging to catch up with other ASEAN countries whose tourism sectors have been very successful. Towards this end, the Biztour5 program was launched in 2003 to help augment government’s efforts in making tourism sustainable in the country. The concept was formulated to answer the need for a private sector-driven tourism effort in the Philippines. During the first two years of advocacy, network and capability building, PCCI utilized its extensive network as infrastructure in accelerating its nationwide Biztour5 tourism campaign. The PCCI tourism committee was able to forge strong partnerships with national government agencies and local government units for an integrated tourism program as Biztour5 cascaded to the regions. In 2006, the committee was able to organize the key tourism industry stakeholders under its Five A’s clusters covering all sectors of the tourism business. This strategy enabled PCCI to address major tourism issues more effectively. Today, tourism remains to be one of the most active committees of PCCI as it continues its advocacy and aim to be the single voice of the Philippine tourism industry.  Director-in-Charge: Mr. Samie Lim
VP for Tourism
Staff-in-Charge:
Angelica Dela Cruz
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26-27 October 2009, Dusit Thani Hotel, Makati City ( www.tourismdialogue.ph) Tourism, together with agri-business, mining, and business process outsourcing, are among national government’s priority sectors. Tourism holds great potential not only in attracting large investments in infrastructure, facilities, and foreign currency inflows, but likewise in income and employment generation. In 2008, tourism comprised 9% of the country’s GDP generating about 3.5 million jobs, which is 10% of the total jobs created in 2008. Foreign tourist arrivals in 2008 reached 3.14 million, a modest 1.5% growth given the global crisis that prevailed at the end of last year. The extensive tourism value chain presents many opportunities for MSMEs to benefit from the industry through primary services, such as hotels, restaurants, and attractions, to indirect services, including food supply, raw materials, and others. Particularly in nature-based attractions, surrounding communities can benefit greatly from tourism-related activities. In an effort to support the further development of Philippine tourism, the President has enacted the Tourism Law (R.A. 9593), “an act declaring a national policy for tourism as an engine of investment, employment, growth and national development …” This law is innovative as it not only re-defines institutional mandates and reorganizes the institutional landscape of Government’s tourism development efforts, but it also places a strong emphasis on enterprise and investment promotion. However, for the new law to become an effective tool for tourism sector development, the focus must be on implementation of the law.
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BizTour, the tourism committee of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) recently sealed a partnership with PLDT SME Nation for a nationwide tourism advocacy campaign called InvesTour.
InvesTour aims to encourage people to invest in tourism as PCCI, the biggest business organization in the country, recognizes tourism as a sunrise industry that will propel national economic growth.
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 Through the efforts of the Department of Tourism (DOT), the Philippines successfully hosted the 4th World Health Tourism Congress in Manila. The Philippines won the bid to be the first country in Asia Pacific to host the prestigious international event as the first three were all held in Europe, previously hosted by Germany, Cyprus and Spain.
PCCI Vice-Chairman and Tourism Committee Chair Samie Lim said that the event was a big opportunity to position the Philippines as a strong emerging destination in the global healthcare industry that once established, will create the thousands of businesses and millions of jobs in medical tourism that the country needs.
“We supply the world with the best healthcare providers, we don’t just offer knowledge and skills that can be learned, we offer our own unique brand of caring for the patients that is uniquely Filipino. Instead of sending all our healthcare professionals abroad, we should keep them here and bring the patients in,” said Lim.
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 The National Competitiveness Council (NCC), together with the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP), recently held the 2nd Local Government Unit (LGU) Conference with the theme, “LGU as Spark Plugs for Sustained Philippine Competitiveness: Best Practice Models.”
The conference highlighted the critical role of local governments in enhancing overall competitiveness of the country by focusing on the four (4) sunrise sectors identified by the government - agribusiness, mining, information technology and tourism.
Successful local chief executives and private sector groups working on the identified sectors presented their best practice models to encourage LGUs to participate in programs that would accelerate their local economic development through enhanced competitiveness.
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Eleven companies recently joined the tourism committee of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, known as PCCI Biztour5.
PCCI Vice-Chairman and Biztour5 Chairman Samie Lim welcomed the new members and gave a comprehensive briefing about the history, objectives and ongoing programs of the committee. The new members were encouraged to submit proposals should they have projects in mind that are relevant to the committee’s advocacies.
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