DECONGESTING the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) is one of the priorities of the Duterte administration to improve the “customer experience” and support growth in the tourism sector.

This was one of the programs agreed upon during a four-hour meeting of key government agencies on Friday, June 22, at the Department of Tourism (DOT) in Makati City.

In an interview with the BusinessMirror, DOT Spokesman and Undersecretary for Tourism Development Planning Benito C. Bengzon Jr. said: “Among the many things discussed is the need to improve the arrivals and departure experience, so we are now exploring the possibility of improving the facilities at the airport to improve customer experience.”

He said this would involve “putting up additional immigration booths, in which the Department of Transportation [DOTr] has committed, and deploying additional personnel, to which the Department of Justice [DOJ] and Bureau of Immigration [BI] have committed. This is a breakthrough.”

The increase in immigration booths would “almost double” the number of existing immigration counters in the international passenger terminals, and is expected to be completed “in six months,” he added.

The meeting was hosted by Tourism Secretary Bernadette Fatima Romulo Puyat, and was attended by Transportation Secretary Arthur P. Tugade, Justice Secretary Menardo I. Guevarra, Public Works and Highways Secretary Mark A. Villar, Customs Commissioner Isidro S. Lapeña, Manila International Airport Authority (Miaa) head Ed V. Monreal and their supporting officials.

Romulo Puyat said Friday’s meeting “showed how much support the other government agencies are willing to extend to ensure the tourism sector gets the focus it deserves as a genuine engine of economic growth.

“Though this convergence of ideas, priorities and projects, we believe the Duterte administration will be able to build the infrastructure needed to connect key destinations and improve its services that will enhance the foreign and local tourists’ experience, and make it more fun to travel in our country.”

The DOT is targeting to attract 12 million foreign visitors, and increasing domestic tourists to 89.2 million by 2022, or by the last year of President Duterte’s term.

Bengzon said the DOJ has also committed to shortening the process for visas upon arrival (VUA) for major tourism markets, such as China and India. He explained that at present, the processing for VUAs for the Chinese market is 10 days; the DOJ hopes to shorten this to five days.

The DOJ is also studying the same for the Indian market, he added, although currently, Indian nationals who already hold visas for Australia, Japan the UK, the Schengen countries and the US are allowed to enter the Philippines visa-free for 14 days for tourism purposes.

The DOT is pushing for fewer visa restrictions for these particular markets, because they are fast growing and their citizens usually visit in groups.

“They are the low-hanging fruit for Philippine tourism,” the DOT official noted. For instance, the country receives about 3,000 to 4,000 arrivals from China via cruise ships.

Data from the DOT showed visitor arrivals from China grew a substantial 52.65 percent to 481,218 from January to April 2018. Arrivals from India increased by 20.36 percent to 43,020 in the same period. (See, “Chinese tourists power visitor arrivals,” in the BusinessMirror, June 21, 2018.)

Romulo Puyat said the meeting was successful because all the Cabinet secretaries “thought like tourists,” thus raising issues that hamper one’s travel experiences and coming up with the solutions that could address those issues.

She explained the meeting was actually the idea of Tugade, when they saw each other at the inauguration of the Mactan International Airport’s new passenger terminal on June 7. “He offered to come to the office, then it snowballed from there, with other Cabinet secretaries expressing their willingness to participate in the meeting.”

Other key priorities raised during the interagency meeting include:

■ “Night rating” 42 domestic airports, 15 of which are already being upgraded with night-landing/departure facilities (DOTr);

■ Adding 30 more toilet facilities at the passenger terminals in Naia (Miaa);

■ Sending “clarificatory” information Korean and Japanese tourists “at source” about the Philippine Customs’s prohibitions regarding duty-free items being taken out of the airport costing more than P10,000 (DOT);

■ Reiteration by the Miaa of its “noninvasive” approach in checking luggage of passengers by using x-ray machines, and marking only of questionable packages/luggage; and;

■ Expected arrival of some 1,600 high-definition CCTV cameras, a P5-million project, for deployment throughout the passenger terminals, and expanding the storage capability to 30 days (Miaa).

At present, the DOT already has an ongoing convergence program with the DPWH, where the latter has set aside some P31 billion to construct 1,688 kilometers of roads to connect tourism destinations in the country this year.