As year 2024 ended, Aklan’s famous Boracay Island has maintained its allure and popularity with all kinds of tourists, with the resort island bagging two prestigious regional and worldwide accolades and contributing much to the local economy.
On Sept. 3, 2024, Boracay Island was presented the Asia’s Leading Luxury Island Destination 2024 at the Asia and Oceania Gala Ceremony in the City of Dreams, Manila.
Two months later on Nov. 24, Boracay Island bested other nominees like Jersey, Mustique, St. Vincent and the Genadines and the Bahamas for the award World’s Leading Luxury Island Destination 2024 at the World Travel Awards Grand Final Gala Ceremony in Madeira, Portugal.
The World Travel Awards (WTA) is a global initiative that recognizes excellence in travel, tourism, and hospitality industries. The WTA gala is considered a milestone event in the industry.
World Travel Awards, established in 1993, acknowledges, rewards, and celebrates excellence across all key sectors of the travel, tourism, and hospitality industries. At present, the WTA brand is recognized globally as the ultimate hallmark of industry excellence.
No letup in tourist arrivals
While, noticeably, foreign tourist arrivals had diminished in the island last year because of competing destinations in the country, this has been more than filled up by locals visiting the island last year. The resort island has almost recovered the figures in tourist arrivals during the pre-COVID 19 pandemic years.
The Aklan Provincial Tourism Office has registered a total of 2,073, 639 tourists visiting the island as of the end of 2024. From that total number of visitors, 412,901 are foreign tourists, almost ten percent of the total projected foreign tourist arrivals of the country during that year, while 1,641,078 are local tourists with 24,100 overseas (balikbayan) Filipinos.
These tourist arrivals are translated into billions of pesos of tourism receipts injected into the provincial and national economy. Out of the total tourist arrivals last year, P49.962 billion had been derived, P33.3 billion out of the foreign tourists and balikbayan Filipinos and P16.5 billion out of the local tourists.
The resort island of Boracay is also now well-entrenched as a cruise ship tourism destination bringing in an average of 1,500 high profile international tourists into the Province of Aklan every sortie.
Jetty Ports and Terminals
Realizing the untold inconvenience, risk and challenges posed by the lack of port infrastructure facilities to cater to travelling visitors and natives alike in going to and from the island resort of Boracay, then Gov. Joeben Miraflores ventured into the bond flotation strategy to finance the construction of the jetty port and terminal in mainland Malay via Caticlan and the Cagban, Manocmanoc, Boracay Island Jetty Port and Terminal in the island itself.
With a P40 million bond flotation, the construction of the Caticlan Jetty Port was started.
Management of the fund generated by the bond flotation was considered by the Department of Finance as a success story in financing local infrastructure projects. Construction of the Cagban Jetty Port and Terminal followed.
Now investments in maintaining the facility have already reached the tune of billions of pesos from port income and well-managed and serviced borrowings from local banking institutions, currently earning about half a billion pesos annually for the provincial government.
Peace as engine of growth
No locality can become a haven for tourists without peace and order. So Governor Joeben endeavored to facilitate a peace agreement between the government and a huge faction of the insurgents, the Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawa-Pilipinas\Revolutionary Proletarian Army\Alex Boncayao Brigade-Tabara Paduano Group (RPM-P\RPA\ABB-TPG) now known as the KAPATIRAN, represented by Jessy Nalaunan Batoy or Ka Bebeng.
Because of this, former Gov. Florencio T. Miraflores was awarded by the national government through the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation, and Unity on Sept. 29, 2023 the Gawad-Kapayapaan – Highest Distinction Award. A peaceful and progressive Boracay is one of the beneficiaries of this peacekeeping effort.
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