BAGUIO TO GAIN BILLIONS WITH PANAGBENGA
- Published on Friday, 27 January 2012 14:51
- Category: Baguio
BAGUIO CITY—“The City of Baguio is poised to gain around a billion pesos with the Panagbenga 2012 festivities,” so said Dangal “Amboy” Guevarra, chief of staff, Panagbenga 2012-Baguio Flower Festival Foundation Inc.
Guevarra said, “this the figure is a rough computed estimate the city would earn with the month long festival.”
According to him, “the Baguio Flower Festival Foundation will not earn anything from this but this will be earned by those in the tourism industry related businesses in the city.”
The Department of Tourism last year has estimated over a million visitors during the Street Dancing and Float Parade events of the festivities, if at an average, each individual would just spend a thousand pesos for transportation, food, and buying some souvenirs, that would easily convert into a billion pesos of fresh infusion for a day’s activity, he explained.
However, he said, nobody has yet come out of how much the city really gains during a festival.
In the case of Victory Liner alone, Guevarra said, the bus company which has a regular of 80 trips to plying the Baguio and Manila route, during the main events of the festival, the street dancing and the float parade, they add a additional of 100 trips, this is only a single bus company we are talking about, he added.
If the transportation sector experiences a business boom during the festival, so would other business such as restaurants, hotels and would trickle down to the cottage industry sector to the simple street vendors, he averred.
This event, according to Guevarra is really a boost to the Baguio economy, the BFFI is just here to promote and manage the event, those who actually gain is the community itself.—BFFI-media committee