fter the rainy season, every long weekend where Friday or Monday is a nonworking day, Baguio City is clogged with tourists. You could hardly move. With the gridlock traffic, public transport vehicles are stuck on roads that become long winded parking lots. Thus, Baguio residents have to walk to their homes. You would see them on sidewalks lugging whatever they bought from the market. But you ain’t seen nothing yet. Wait until the Panagbenga parades?
Same thing in Sagada. Last weekend which was long as Friday was a Chinese New Year holiday and with the bad publicity on Boracay, many tourists went to Sagada only to find out that all the hotel, inn and homestay accommodations were all booked. Many of them slept in their vehicles while others might have passed the night under the watchful stars and other heavenly bodies. Well, isn’t that part of the adventure? Too bad, nearby Municipality of Besao was not prepared to make money from, or to accommodate the tourist spillover. While the mayor there might want his constituents to benefit from it, a municipal official there is saying things, sometimes in a sarcastic way, against tourists or tourism in general.
With these realities which will continue as Baguio is Baguio and the Cordillera mountains are wholesome mountains, the obvious beneficiaries are the owners of hotels, inns, restaurants, gasoline stations, etc. But how about us, the ordinary people?
Regarding this, there are two kinds of people. The first kind are those who have initiative. Seeing the realities, they might be moving about, exerting all efforts possible (if they had not already completed some related business projects) to make money from tourists. The number of businesses that cater to outsiders are innumerable. They must be already enjoying the sound of their cash registers.
The other kind of people are the majority. Those who are lethargic and have no capital to speak of. Nor do they have the creativity to move heaven and earth to raise capital. This is where the government should come in.
How? By encouraging these people to go into businesses to cater to tourists. But how can this be done when people in government tasked to do this had never even tried being in business of whatever kind—whether the big kinds or the micro type such as selling banana cue on the sidewalk. Their knowledge on putting up a business is just theoretical so they fail to inspire.
As to the capital requirements of the masses, the government can provide it, but just like the lack of business experience, the government officers in-charge of distributing the funds often don’t know how to be effective. They would give out the cash and could not monitor how it was used and how to get it back.
It all boils down to incompetence in government.**