DOTr, DOT eye European market

Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista and Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco are eyeing the European market to boost the country's tourism revenues.

- MARIANNE GO

Secretary Frasco recently told reporters that aside from the Indian market, the Department of Tourism (DOT) wants to attract more European tourists to visit the country even as the government continues to exert efforts to entice the lucrative China market to visit the country anew.

Secretary Bautista, for his part, had already been paving the way to bring European tourists to the country with the recent signing of a memorandum of cooperation between the French Civil Aviation Authority and the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines that would capacitate our aviation officials with improved oversight functions such as inspector training, airport operations and air safety. The enhancement in PhilippineFrance bilateral relations, Bautista said, would run parallel with the launch of direct flights between Manila and Paris before the year ends.

The initial thought from the media was that with the enhanced aviation cooperation between the Philippines and France, the country's flag carrier Philippine Airlines would finally launch direct flights to Paris from Manila, marking its return to the European market. However, PAL president Capt. Stanley Ng has doused speculation that PAL would indeed launch by the end of this year its return to European airspace. According to Ng, PAL is really planning to launch flights to Europe in the near future, but those plans would still be dependent on the delivery of new aircraft that are currently affected by a global supply chain problem. At present, PAL appears to be focusing more on resuming its flights to the US with the launch of its flight to Seattle next month.

It quickly turned out, all along, that both Secretaries Bautista and Frasco were already quietly talking to French government and aviation officials of Air France-KLM to proceed with a bilateral agreement to launch direct flights between Manila and Paris even though Philippine carriers are not yet quite ready to do so.