Palau tour operators to to bring Palauans to Davao

Davao City (12 August) — Tour operators from Palau with two different objectives joined the Mindanao Travel and Tour Exposition held at the entertainment plaza of SM City Davao from August 11 to 13, 2006.

Davao, which is an hour and 30 minutes plane ride from Palau, is an interesting destination to tour operator Bryan Clark, managing director of Palau Davao Travel Agency.

Clark saw the potential of Davao as the market for the residents of Palau.

“There are a lot of interesting things here that we do not have in our island,” he said.

He said Palau is an island endowed with rich marine natural resources and good sites for diving. But we do not have the kind of facilities that you have here.

He said his purpose is to bring Palauans to Davao firstly for shopping saying that the goods here are about two thirds less in cost back home.

“Our residents are awed with the malls here like SM having a wide selections of what they need and also the movie houses because we do not have theaters in Palau,” he said.

He said these are the things that Palauans are up to and they have arranged packages according to the needs of the travelers.

“We can go high end or the budget packages. We can have four days and three nights package plus other inclusions like day tours and breakfast at $495 in a cheap hotel as an example,” he said.

He also said that Palauans also look at Davao for medical tourism, in fact some few families from Palau are already here for dental and eye check up as they discovered that the facilities are excellent and the cost is very affordable.

He said they also want to have in their markets fresh fruits and vegetables that are abundant here even as he said that they expect to have Durian in the island come Christmas.

There are already talks going on among the authorities on quarantine and they could only hope that everything comes smoothly, he added.

Meanwhile Dermot Keane, general manager of Sam’s Tours is into inbound tourism selling Palau as the best destination for diving to other markets.

But he said the Philippines as well as Davao are interesting markets where there are available flights linking their island to the other European markets aside from tourists/divers coming from Taiwan, China and Japan.

He said the Silk Air of Singapore and the Asian Spirit are carriers that will connect them to the bigger market.

Asian Spirit sales executive Ella Romero said their Davao Palau route is doing good saying that they have bigger load especially their Palau to Davao flights.

She said they fly thrice weekly Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays leaving Manila at 1:00 pm then leave Davao at 4:00 pm and arrive Palau at 6:45 pm (Palau time).

She said since they open the route in April they maintain over 50 percent load factor up to this time where it is peak season for Palau as it is good time for diving.

The route to Davao from Palau this August is high because of the Kadayawan, she said.

Asian Spirit flies to several domestic routes with Boracay having the highest load factor and two international flights. Other than Palau, Micronesia it also has route to Kaoshiung, Taiwan via Batanes. (PIA XI/pdbanzon)