Showing posts with label Boracay Island. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boracay Island. Show all posts

Saturday 27 October 2018

#Philippines - The new-Boracay opens with a whole new set of rules


It’s open again. Boracay Island, forced to close after being described by Philippine President Duterte as a’cesspool’, has undergone a major makeover of infrastructure and opens with new rules to help control tourist growth in the future.

Tourists flooded back onto the island today as the island re-opened. Suffering the same problems as Maya Bay and southern Thai islands, Boracay Island had been suffering for years under the burden of too much tourist-love but without the necessary infrastructure to contain the growth. At its peak Boracay Island was attracting two million visitors a year, well above its ability to maintain services.

Under a new set of rules the Boracay beachfront has been cleared of the masseuses, bonfires, beach vendors and sunset bonfires. Even the builders of its famous ‘selfie’ sandcastles have been cleared away.

Buildings have been bulldozed and beach businesses set back to create a 30 metre buffer zone from the waterline.
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 Many hotels and restaurants have been shut down because they didn’t meet the new standards and less that 160 tourism-related businesses have been approved to open their doors again.
All water sports have also been banned for the time being.

The island also had three casinos but they’ve also been shuttered whilst their future is being considered by Duterte.

The new rules have also determined that only 19,200 tourists will be allowed on the island at any one time. The government says they will be able to enforce that by controlling the number of hotel rooms available for bookings.

Additionally, drinking or smoking on the beaches are now banned and the huge beach parties dubbed “LaBoracay”, that would draw thousands of tourists during May each year, will not be operating in the future.

Tens of thousands of island workers were left without employment when the island was closed down six months ago. Many welcomed the re-opening of the island and hope its days as a ghost-town island are over.

Some of the new rules. Please note “Don’t vomit in public!”



Source - The Thaiger



https://12go.asia/?z=581915

Saturday 6 October 2018

#Philippines to rein in visitors to Boracay island, strained by tourism


The Philippines will limit the number of visitors setting foot on its most treasured island resort each day when it reopens to tourists on October 26 after a six-month rehabilitation effort, an environment official said on Wednesday.


Boracay, located off the northern tip of the central island of Panay, is famed for its sugary white sands, turquoise waters, lively nightlife and abundant water sports, which attracted nearly 2 million domestic and foreign visitors last year.


But in April, President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the closure of the island, calling it a "cesspool", because of sewage dumped into the sea and buildings constructed too close to the shore.


About a third of the 600 to 700 resorts on Boracay, about 308 km (192 miles) from Manila, the capital, were operating without permits, authorities found.


Just 19,000 tourists will be allowed on the island on any given day, with the number of workers capped at 15,000 daily, the environment official, Sherwin Rigor, said in a television interview.
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 Only half of the island's 12,000 existing hotel rooms will be allowed to open each day, he added, to ensure the number of guests on the tiny 10-sq-km (4-sq-mile) island is below its "carrying capacity" of 55,000.


Rigor, who is an undersecretary at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, added that authorities would ban beachfront parties, and activities such as eating, smoking and drinking there.


The closure of Boracay, which earns the Philippines more than a billion dollars in tourism revenue every year, weighed on gross domestic product in the second quarter. Growth slowed to a near three-year low of 6 percent in April-June.

Source - TheJakartaPost

https://12go.asia/?z=581915