Business Mirror
Regions
Written by Butch Gunio / Correspondent
WEDNESDAY, 10 MARCH 2010 20:18
BALANGA CITY, Bataan—Officials of the Philippine
Women’s University (PWU) branch here said they are expanding
tourism-related courses to accommodate more students and help
prepare for the expected growth of the Philippine tourism industry.
School officials said they expect the local tourism
industry to grow, and need people educated and trained in tourism.
“Compared to our neighboring Asian countries, we still lag
behind in terms of the number of tourist arrivals probably because
of the peace- and order problem in Mindanao, yet this will surely
grow,” said Val Toral, the school’s administrator.
In the recent celebration of the school’s
eighth Foundation Day, campus officials bared plans to widen tourism-related
courses to accommodate more students.
As part of the strengthening of the campus tourism
department, Toral said, the campus has been supporting the tourism
activities and thrusts of the Bataan provincial government and
the Balanga city government.
Recently, a pack of tour guides from the PWU
Balanga assisted officials of the Department of Environment and
Natural Resources (DENR) and bird experts in the conduct of a
census of water birds in this city.
The five tour guides from the PWU Balanga campus
were? faculty members Jayson Cayanan and Frances Rosselle Gonzales,
and tourism students Chyrwin Field, Jinky Larion and Pamela Banzon.
The five underwent a series of tour-guiding seminars
conducted by the provincial tourism office and the Balanga City
tourism office.
Included in the training package was to develop
the skill of identifying and naming the migratory and endemic
birds found in the wetlands and mudflats here.
The Department of Tourism (DOT) has included
the areas in barangays Sibacan, Tortugas and Puerto Rivas in this
city among the 12 official bird-watching sites in the Philippines.
The DOT has launched a tourism guidebook of the
12 bird-watching sites in the country.
The wetlands in this city attract one of the
largest concentrations of migrant shorebirds and waterfowls anywhere
in the Philippines, according to the Wild Bird Club of the Philippines,
the country’s leading bird-watching society.
The group of tour guides from PWU Balanga campus
said tour-guiding in the bird census here was quite easy for they
had accompanied bird experts.
The DENR and bird experts counted 18,679 migratory
water birds present in the wetlands in this city compared to the
15,251 water birds recorded last year.
