By Roderick T. dela Cruz
A new hotel and a convention center will soon rise at the sprawling SM Mall of Asia complex in Pasay City to cater to both international and domestic visitors.
Tourism Secretary Ace Durano said the construction of the two tourist facilities along Roxas Boulevard would help accommodate the influx of international tourists to the country.
The Mall of Asia complex, which sits on 19.5 hectares of reclaimed land in what is called “Bay City,” is envisioned to be the next tourist attraction in Metro Manila.
Durano said the SM Group had relayed its plans to construct a deluxe hotel and a convention center in Bay City that would make the Mall of Asia a complete tourist center.
He said the country needed more hotels and convention centers to achieve its target of attracting three-million tourists in 2006 and 5 million tourists by 2010. Some 2.6-million foreign guests visited the country in 2005.
The tourism chief said more than 2,000 staff and employees of Amway China, one of the world’s largest direct sales companies, were arriving this month for both business and leisure.
Durano said the Amway employees would come in four batches, each composed of 500 individuals, and would stay in Manila, Cebu and Boracay.
Other foreign companies, he said, had also indicated their plans to hold seminars in the country, but the problem was the lack of hotel rooms that meet the standard of foreign tourists.
The tourism chief said nine out of 10 foreign tourists in the country preferred to stay at deluxe hotels, but only 15 percent of all 16,000 hotel rooms in the country met their standards.
He said the construction of a hotel at the Bay City and another deluxe resort hotel in Cebu by a Korean company would help ease the problem.
Phil BXT, a Korean real estate developer, has committed to invest P3 billion for the construction of a 616-room resort hotel, a retirement village and a golf course in Mactan Island, Cebu.
http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=business03_aug03_2006
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