Travel blog group to feature Ilocos historical, cultural sites

By Dominic B. dela Cruz

Staff reporter

Laoag City—The Philippines is set to host the Travel Blog Exchange (TBEX) on October 13-16m 2016 in Metro Manila. Expected to be featured is Ilocos Norte’s historical and cultural destinations.

TBEX is the largest gathering of travel bloggers, writers, new media content creators, social media and other industry professionals attracting more than a thousand participants mainly from North America and Europe.

TBEX was first introduced to Asia particularly in Bangkok, Thailand on October 15-17, 2015 and the Philippines bided for the second edition for TBEX Asia and was selected this year’s host destination.

Department of Tourism (DOT) chief operations officer Modesto Baloloy announced that TBEX will promote the tourism industries of Ilocos and Vigan globally.

Mr. Baloloy said the TBEX press trip visited the province on June 6-10 wherein historical and cultural destinations in the province were visited.

The event will feature several familiarization trips in selected Philippine destinations.

The press trip was an arranged familiarization trip for selected bloggers from North America, Europe and the Philippines to explore some destinations that will part of the post-BEX tours, and familiarization trips in October.

Meanwhile, the DOT conducted Tourism Establishment Forum on Accommodation Standards and Visitor Arrival Tracking on May 31-June 2, 2016 in the municipalities of Adams, Pagudpud and Laoag.

Mr. Baloloy said the DOT is currently in the process of revising the existing rules and regulations to govern the accreditation of tour guides.

This is in line with the department’s thrust of implementing the mandatory accreditation of primary tourism establishments and to strengthen the visitors’ arrival tracking system in the region.

According to Mr. Baloloy, the forum focused on the issues and concerns of the present system gathering visitor arrivals statistics and orientation on the standards for accommodation and accreditation process.

Relative to this, LGU tourism officers, hotel owners and travel agencies attended the forum where they were informed about the proper accommodation of tourists with the proper list and submission of tourist statistics arrivals to be submitted to the DOT.

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