THE Philippines must raise tourism quality, make environment conducive to investments and market key tourist destinations to improve the competitiveness of its tourism industry.

This was stressed in an interview by Uwe Sturmann, German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ) corporate manager for private sector, at the sidelines of the recently held National Tourism dialogue in light of the decline in the country's tourism competitiveness ranking.

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"The basic thing is that we need to improve tourism quality. Many people I know who come to the Philippines as tourists compare the quality of products and services to other countries where they have been," he said.

Sturmann said the country needed to implement strict standards to improve the quality of its tourism products and services.

He also cited the importance of bringing in more tourism investments by creating an investor-friendly environment.

"What is more important is that an investor does not only look at investment incentives. They want to have less bureaucracy, less red tape and services are in place. And if the infrastructure is not keeping up, no tourism investments would come in," he said.

Sturmann also urged the country to market its key tourist destinations both at the local and national levels.

He noted that the Philippines has great but underutilized potential in tourism compared to neighboring countries.

"I'm not saying that the Philippines should spend as much like Malaysia. But if you look at the promotional materials that the DOT and many others offer, there is no corporate identity saying Philippines. You have 10 different brochures, leaflets and posters and you don't even notice that we belong to the same country," he said.

Sturmann said the Tourism Act of 2009 is a good starting point in raising the tourism quality levels and in marketing key tourist destinations.

"But it needs to be a public-private partnership," he said. "You need to listen to business people who know a lot better."

For his part, Ruy Moreno, executive director of the National Competitiveness Council (NCC), believes that policy rules and regulations and their continued implementation are equally important to improving the country's tourism competitiveness ranking.

"Sometimes we do misunderstand that it is said we are consistent in implementation. That is because we the people who are implementing are changing the rules or the policies as they move along. We should have some kind of a roadmap that should help provide such kind of continuity and the private sector is important," he said. (Danielle Venz/Philexport)