Boracay MICE Alliance (BMA), a collaboration of hospitality stakeholders formed three years ago, held its first-ever Networking and Business Exchange in Manila on Monday to convey to the world that the island is ready to welcome business events.
They are positioning the island as a sustainable tropical paradise for business events, with the tagline Choose Boracay.
“We really need everyone’s support. A lot of destination marketing efforts have been put up among regions in the Philippines and among our Asian neighbours. We want a piece of business not just for leisure but also for MICE,” said Cleofe Albiso, BMA chair and managing director of Megaworld Hotels and Resorts.
Currently, Boracay’s business events capabilities include 14,730 keys across 430 hotels and resorts accredited by the Department of Tourism (DoT); three convention centres; and meetings and event spaces for a total of 4,500 pax. More hotels are expected to come online in the future.
This year, the DoT is targeting 2.1 million tourists for Boracay, of which 800,000 are foreigners. Although there were 2.1 million arrivals in 2023, there were only 422,201 foreigners, the rest of whom were domestic tourists or Filipino workers based overseas.
Maia Israel, BMA president and general manager of Belmont Hotel Boracay, noted that in 1Q2024, the island received more than 503,000 visitors from the National Capital Region and Western Visayas, “which means there is still room to develop (tourism from) other Philippine regions”.
During the same period, the top two foreign inbound markets were from South Korea and China with 50,329 and 22,324 pax, respectively.
In an effort to cultivate new source markets, Boracay and the newly-formed Global Tourism Business Association held a business forum on April 18-20, 2024, which was attended by nine Asian ambassadors.
