THE Department of Tourism (DOT) has relaunched a program to attract overseas Filipinos and encourage them to bring home their foreign friends or extended family.
In a ceremony at the SM Mall of Asia Activity Center, the DOT and Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) signed a memorandum of agreement for the joint implementation of the Bisita Be My (BBM) Guest Program, which gives “incentives and prizes [for overseas Filipino workers and Filipinos living abroad] for bringing home a foreign friend, spouse or family into the Philippines,” said Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco.
These includes raffle prizes like condominiums and cars, along with holiday vacation packages. “And we will give privilege cards that you can present in various malls and accommodation establishments, and restaurants nationwide that can give you discounts,” she told reporters.
A “travel passport” will also be issued to the balikbayan and visiting OFW to be stamped whichever destination he visits in the country, which allows him to “claim prizes at the airport,” she said.
BHAF 3.0
For her part, DMV Secretary Susan “Toots” Ople said, “Tourism is about creating moments, and there’s no better sector and people to do that with than our overseas Filipino workers. They will plan things in accordance with time limitations. Also, OFWs are everywhere; I went to Tibet, there was an OFW there working as an accountant in a hotel. And everywhere we go, they always ask how they can help our country. So this program gives them a vehicle to do just that.”
The BBM Guest Program is patterned after the Bring Home a Friend (BHAF) program launched under the term of Tourism Secretary Mina Gabor (1996-1998), then re-introduced by DOT chief Wanda Tulfo Teo in October 2017. No prize winners were announced under Teo’s term as the program was scrapped by her successor, Bernadette Romulo Puyat. Sources said, however, despite the scrapping of said program, some DOT officials brought in by Teo were still trying to claim the condominiums and vehicle prizes committed by sponsors, a large property developer and a leading vehicle retailer.
Gabor, in a column for the BusinessMirror in December 2017, said the reason DOT launched the initial BHAF campaign in her term was because the top tourist arrivals in the Philippines then were, “Australians, followed by the Japanese, and then the Americans. It was mathematically not right that a country like the United States, which is home to the biggest number of Filipinos, whose potential mainstream visitors were so many times larger than Australia, placed only at the third spot in visitor arrivals to the country.” The program helped put the US as a major tourism market. (See, “Bring Home A Friend II,” in the BusinessMirror, December 3, 2017.)
Balikbayans boost arrivals
More than 20 years later, South Koreans and mainland Chinese became the top travelers to the Philippines, boosting arrivals to an historic-high of 8.26 million in 2019. Post-pandemic, the US is once more the top source market for foreign travelers, enhanced by a brisk balikbayan segment. From February to November 30, 2022, some 2.22 million tourists have visited the country, with the US accounting for 419,901; followed by Koreans at 325,818; and Australians at 105,861. Overseas Filipinos also accounted for 26 percent, or 568,564, of total arrivals for the period.
Netizens earlier criticized the BBM Guest Program for tailoring it to the intials of Marcos Jr., nicknamed Bongbong. They also thought it was going to be the new brand campaign of the DOT.
Published reports also indicated the travel program was originally Ople’s, who had approached Frasco for help in offering special travel packages for OFWs coming home for Christmas, via hotels and travel/tourism organizations. Frasco, however, turned it into an incentive program instead. It was clarified also that the program title “BBM” didn’t come from the DMV chief.