by Aurelio Pena
IT’S A PITY there’s no deliberate effort by any tourism office in the Davao region to help visitors find their way around the cities or provinces.
We’re not talking here of “tourist destinations” but of giving simple directions to visitors arriving in Davao for various reasons–visiting relatives, family reunions, attending seminars or conventions, attending a funeral, closing a deal, etc, etc.
Sometime ago, my US-based sister and her husband visited us here in Davao and had to ask waitresses and bartenders at The Marco Polo Davao for directions to find the nearest bookshop, nearest internet café and nearest ATM.
My Russian friends Artem and Maxim from Vladivostok, told me a few years back that they asked the taxi drivers hanging around outside Marco Polo where to find a native eatery that serves spicy “panga” (tuna jaw).
And just last month, my Dubai-based friends Shawn (a Canadian) and Sachin (an Indian) also asked the help of a taxi driver to take them to a restaurant that serves the best steak and found it along Torres street–not at THAT usual classy place (you know where)–but at a much smaller place I wasn’t even so familiar with.
Mind you, these people aren’t tourists—they really don’t care about what Davao can offer as “tourist spots” or “tour destinations”. They just want to know where to find local food delicacies and eat like locals do—or some quiet hangouts where they can talk with exporters to close a deal, etc.
When visiting other cities in the country or even foreign countries, it’s also my usual habit to ask local people for directions–asking the hotel clerk, the waiters, the taxi drivers outside the hotel. It would have been nice if only there’s something like a “city guidebook” that one finds in other countries that guides visitors in making their way around the city.
It wasn’t surprising that last month a local outfit called Southpoint had began putting together a 200-page handy guidebook for Davao that contains complete information that would be very useful to visitors navigating their way in this southern city. It’s still a work in progress, but the “Davao Visitors’ Guidebook” will be ready for distribution early next year.
Travel writers working on the project said road maps of various sections of the city will be included in the guidebook as well as listings, locations and descriptions of hotels, inns, pensions, restaurants, resorts, etc and pictures of common landmarks in the city to help visitors find their way easily around town.
While attending some of the meetings of the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA)-assisted Davao tourism industry cluster several months back, one of the urgent problems brought up by the various tourism councils in the region was the “lack of information materials” about Davao needed badly to entice more visitors to come to this booming city.
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