Bilyonaryo Joey Concepcion is urging President Rodrigo Duterte to open the country to more tourists to save hotels, restaurants, and airlines.
“The tourism sector has been shut down for basically two years. How long can people in this business sector continue to sustain their obligation to the banks by belated loans?” asked the presidential adviser for entrepreneurship in an interview with TV5’s “The Chiefs.”
Concepcion said the Philippines should follow the lead of Thailand which would resume its quarantine-free travel scheme from February 1.
Concepcion said there was no point in imposing more quarantine restrictions because these have not been effective in stopping the entry of Delta and Omicron variants in the country.
“Is facility quarantine, doing RT-PCR tests the right approach? The most important right now are vaccines that are protecting our people from severe infection, death and I think that doesn’t change the equation,” said Concepcion.
“If we continue to shut this down not only the sector will die but the airlines will be unable to survive,” he added.
The pandemic travel curbs that have been in place since March 2020 have crippled the tourism industry with visitors trickling to just 3,000 a day from 40,000 to 50,000 a day before the pandemic.
He is suggesting that visitors take antige tests prior to their departure to the Philippines which is what Filipinos do before they travel to the United States
“What I’m trying to say here is that when we shift (alert levels), we do it slowly. We can see now a gradual downward trend of Omicron, once we get to lower levels, we can bring it back to three days and eventually consider doing away with facility quarantine,” said Concepcion.
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