By Jim Walker for The Visitor Newspaper
The Asociación Panamaña de Executivos de Empresas (Panamanian Association of Business Executives or APEDE) held its annual tourism forum on Tuesday this week. APEDE is a not for profit organization that was formed in 1958. It works to strengthen the nation´s business sector by promoting entrepreneurism and efficient practices. The recognition that has come from APEDE’s activism, fairness and fostering of free enterprise has given it a strong voice in national affairs.
Ernesto Orillac (Adviser to the Minister of Tourism), Nubia Stella Martinez (VP of Tourism of Colombia), Salomon Shamah (Minister of Tourism Panama), Gina Benedetti (Ambassador to Colombia in Panama), Ursula Kiener Ford (VP of APEDE's Tourism Commission and CEO of Panama Travel Group), Alberto Quiroz (President of APEDE's Tourism Commission)
The organization can often be viewed reliably as a measure of things to come in Panama. With this in mind I attended the fourteenth Foro de Turismo (Tourism Forum) de APEDE, called Fotur’09, at the Miraflores Visitor Center on the Panama Canal along with over two hundred others in attendance. The conference was very action oriented and focused on how to set goals and achieve measurable results in this growing industry.
Introductory remarks
Rubén Castillo Gill, APEDE’s current president set the tone for Fotur’09: “Panama has the tools to become a center for tourism in the Americas, That will take teamwork. Tourism is an authentic tool for national development.”
ATP Administrator
Salomón Shamah, of the Panama Tourism Authority (ATP) stated that tourism is one of the pillars of Panama’s economy and that Panama has to potential to more effectively develop this asset.
Shamah says the tourism industry needs to develop benchmarks and be careful in the development of its master plan. Airports in the interior capable of receiving international flights are needed. He called road improvement in the interior to help develop destinations a “no brainer.”
“Visitors are knocking at the door”, says Mr. Shamah, “and Panama needs to be ready by treating tourism as a product or set of products to develop.” These products” besides an airport in the interior, include agro tourism on interior farms, the historic jewels in Panama City, and a state-of-the-art event center in order to compete with Patagonia and Thailand. The best approach, says Mr. Shamah, is to view the problems (like transportation in the interior) as business opportunities.
A lesson from Colombia
The Vice President of Turismo Proexport Colombia, Nubia Stella Martinez, spoke about how Colombia revitalized a moribund tourist industry in two years. She gave examples that Panama can use to improve tourism. She started with a slide show with Pablo Escobar and then a bombed apartment building. Internationally published reports of drugs and an armed rebellion (FARC) reduced tourism in Colombia from 1.2 million a year in 1980 to 700 thousand in 1984 and 600 thousand in 2001 a year before President Uribe took office.
Twenty years of bad press left Columbia with a dismal tourism image despite its safe cities. However, a targeted approach revitalized tourism in just two years with 1.5 million tourists visiting Colombia in 2006.
The point of the presentation was that treating tourism as a branded product works. The success of Colombia’s approach is worth noting as it was echoed in later presentations about tourism in Panama. Martinez stated that the business community needs to be recruited. Trips need to be organized to bring individuals, the foreign tourism community, the press, and trade missions in to experience a country.
Of Colón and cruise ships
Loads of passengers and a new cruise on the way
It has been a year since Royal Caribbean’s Enchantment of the Sea has called Colón its home port. Augusto Terracina of Colon 2000 gave an overview of the still-new facility, its 15 check-in stations and large concourse. Since January last year, 4,000 Panamanian passengers embarked on the ships 17 sailings of last season. There were also 10,000 Colombians, 4,000 Mexicans, 3,000 from the United States and 10,000 from other countries.
COPA Airlines delivered more cruise ship-bound passenger than any other airline. With continued US visa difficulty, a second cruise ship will start operations from Colón as its home port next year with Jamaica and Costa Rica as destinations.
Getting Folks off the Boat
A comment by speaker Julio Luque of the Colón Chamber of Commerce was telling. It turns out that some folks come all the way from Ft. Lauderdale and don’t get off the boat in Colón. That fact ties into the issues of having a Panama “brand” and “products” along with establishing tourism “clusters.”
The decentralization of tourism
Training for tourism jobs
Temistocles Rosas of the Instituto Nacional de Formación Profesional y Capacitación para el Desarrollo Humano (INADEH) spoke about the need to effectively train workers in support of the tourism industry. INADEH is in the business of training for technical skills including English.
INADEH has trained over 6,500 people in 600 or so classes in food service, tourism, and hotel work. Mr. Rosas reports that they were not entirely happy with their results until they partnered with the Panama Hotel Association, APATEL, with help from consultants from the Freeman Group.
A successful idea
Pedro Fábrega of Hotel Los Mandarinos spoke about the Coclé Tourism Cluster. Eight businesses in Coclé Province ranging from large to small have developed tourism routes that include the province’s beaches, mountains, and ecological wonders.
This approach has helped direct tourists to the “cluster” of businesses that support it by promoting the “product” of tourism in Coclé and specifically the developers of the cluster. The route is featured, location by location, in a very professional video available to foreign tour operators.
An international airport in Rio Hato costs less
Just up the road from Santa Clara is the Rio Hato airport with a hardened runway sufficient for international jets, provided that the runway is extended another 350 meters. Consultant Zósimo Guardia, makes the argument for an estimated investment of $55 million over two and half years at Rio Hato to extend the runway and run the Pan American highway underground in a tunnel.
The alternative, according to Mr. Guardia, is a more than $200 million project to build a new airport to handle everything international except 747’s. A new airport would take five or years to build assuming that it passes ANAM’s environmental impact assessments.
People pay to watch turtles
Using the tens of thousands of folks who visit the Galapagos Islands every year as a starting example, Ingacio Ruíz makes that point that tourists will travel the world over to see the wonders of unspoiled nature, including large numbers of turtles. The point is that preserving nature pays for itself, especially in Panama which is perhaps the most biologically diverse place on earth with its 900 plus bird species, more two hundred tree species per hectare in parts of the Darien, and whale breeding offshore.
Four strong points of Panama tourism
Maintaining and restoring historic Panama
Jaime Figueroa of the Panama Chamber of Commerce and Industry spoke of the need to preserve and restore the crown jewels of the first European settlement on the Pacific and other historic sites throughout the nation.
Get those tourists to the Mall!
Ángel Muñoz of Albrook Mall reminded the audience of the large number of tourists who have shopping at or near the top of their list of things to do, dutifully leaving their money in Panama.
The Panama Canal
The Miraflores Visitor Center receives $2.6 million a year from over half a million visitors, of which 64% are foreign tourists. Mariángela Dengo of ACP noted that the completion of the Panama Canal Expansion will make it possible for the world’s largest cruise ships with up to 5,000 passengers to transit meaning substantially more revenue for those ships.
Biodiversity
Lider Sucre spoke of Fundación Amador and the BioMuseo, the Frank Gehry designed museum now under construction on the Amador Causeway that will feature the great biodiversity of Panama. Using the BioMuseo as an example of a tourist magnet, Mr. Sucre also reminded that Panama is itself the biodiversity museum and that protecting it will draw tourists.
Security for tourism investment
The Law of Islands and Coasts
Publio Cortés of Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) explained why the current administration is introducing a new law to rectify mistakes in the law regarding titling of island and coastal property, which was just passed last spring. The state owns right of possession property; property in the interior can be titled after fifteen years of use but island and coastal property cannot; island and coastal property is the possession of the people of Panama and it is the government’s duty of protect that right.
Protecting investor rights
This was a review of the protection provided to investors in tourism related projects on right of possession land and had to do largely with Panama Law 8 which specifies, point by point, the benefits of having met the law’s criteria and invested in tourism related businesses in Panama.
Protecting nature preserves tourist income
Raúl Pintado, the National Environmental Authority (ANAM)’s Director of Protected Areas reinforced the necessity of protecting natural habitat in Panama as a matter of enlightened self interest. This message was repeated throughout the forum. Nature, preserved, attracts tourists, and nature, preserved, protects the lives and life styles of indigenous peoples in Panama.
Sport fishing and whale watching pay
Not only are turtles popular to watch they are an excellent indicator of the health of reef systems and coastal waters which is part of why Panama’s Aquatic Resource Authority tracks them. Last year people paid roughly $500,000 in Panama waters to dive and visit the sharks. The same folks paid about $2,600,000 for all costs outside of the dive.
In closing
APEDE ended the conference by reminding us all that taking care of nature, perhaps as a “product,” pays for itself by attracting paying tourists.
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