BY HELEN J CATALBAS
TIME was when tropical destinations bannered the sea, sun and sand as their primary attractions before other tourism products were developed and diversified. That being so, the favorite attires then were the one piece, two-piece or half nude swimwear or the birth day suit.
Suntan was authentic and not chemical-induced then. An authentic suntan was considered a status symbol for many international tourists. It meant they took a paid vacation leave from work, flew to a tropical paradise across the orient seas and splurged in the host local sea.
When they went back to their home country, they paraded their suntan among their peers amidst the latter’s ohs and wows. On the part of the tourists concerned, ouches from scalded tan were concealed by replies of thanks and sweet smiles that camouflaged flaking faces, arms, front and back cleavages and buttocks that were still in sunburn hot condition.
Then came the time when tourists flocked to indoor attractions as the skin cancer scare made them shun the sun. Non-tropical destinations, with the use of modern technology, cloned the tropical attractions right in their home front. Thankfully, we were a witness to that innovation.
That experience took place when we were chosen to be one of the 15-country representatives from a field of 54 countries granted a scholarship for a tourism marketing planning course in Western Europe years ago. That was when the skin cancer scare was high. During one of our field trips, we went to an indoor “tropical resort” and observed how this first world country retained its outbound tourists and attracted inbound tourists.
As the name implied, the tourist facility had the features of what a natural tropical resort should be.
A sun-drenched beach was a wide and long smoked glass beneath which were light tubes with dimension proportionate to the smoked glass on top of it. There we saw male and female tourists in swim wear lying and rolling as if they were sunbathing on a real tropical beach fringed with palms and trees.
Tourists and resort goers were swimming in an oversized swimming pool with curated waves created by some electronic mechanism with splashing sound and motion towards the manmade “shore”.
As tourist interest on the sea-sun-sand product surged, the skin cancer scare was replaced by the salmonella and coliform scares. Despite these modern-day scares, however, island and beach destinations were once again the center of attention to the point of over tourism.
Normally, summer is conducive to the sea- sun-sand tourism product. However, this year’s summer heat is something else.
Going back to our question: is this summer a tourism attraction or a tourism repulsion?
We need an accurate report on tourist arrivals statistics to be able to answer our own question. (HJC/PN)
