Hotels are seeing sustained recovery triggering rehiring of workers.
But Benjamin Martinez, HSMA president, said most members forecast that 2023 will be the year that business will be back to pre-pandemic.
“This year, we are starting to break barriers as we see a sustained recovery from our heavily impacted tourism sector. With the downgrading of alert levels and acceptance of fully vaccinated domestic and foreign visitors in hotels and resorts across the country, guest room occupancy has improved. Booked functions are increasing. Jobs are restored and I also see a lot of recruitments for vacancies. With this breakthroughs, our hopes are high that we are truly on the road to recovery,” Martinez said
Martinez said the average occupancy of hotels has now hit 50 percent though still far from 71 percent pre-pandemic in 2019.
Martinez attributed the increased bookings to domestic staycations and live -in functions due to the lowering Alert Level to 1 and the increase in foreign arrivals.
According to Martinez, majority are domestic staycations and domestic business travelers.
“We see foreign tourists slowly coming and we expect them to increase further in the future,” he added.
According to Martinez, most of the hotels are 95 to 100 percent manned in anticipation of the increase in business.
He said some are even recruiting for new workers to replace those that opted to work in other industries.
Martinez announced HSMA will hold three projects this year, all in partnership with the Department of Tourism.
These include the highly successful September Online Sale which will not only offer rooms, food and beverage products and ancilliary services, but will also offer tours.
HSMA will also hold the Veritas Awards, now on its eighth cycle, on October 25.
The third project is the first Philippine tourism and hospitality forum to be held in November.
“Designed to be a flagship project that aims to be a catalyst in driving is emulating changes in the industry, the one-day program will be a mix of keynotes, plenary sessions, panel discussions and fireside chats. An exhibition section will also be set up that will showcase a wide array of editions of the forum. We will be expanding the program to over three days to include breakout sessions workshops that will attract more diverse fields of attendees from all sectors of the hospitality industry,” Martinez said. Irma Isip
