Making It Fun in the Philippines

We don't need the word "more" to make the Philippines attractive... or if you want to use the word more PLEASE TELL US WHY! There are fun areas in the Philippines, no questions asked but in tourism, it's unethical to use deception just to get traffic.  Just think... some bloggers may even claim to be experts just to get traffic (and I have done that, caught red handed).  In my case, I have dropped any pretense that I'm a know it all and decided it's time to be myself.  Now for my argument that why "more" is not necessarily needed in the marketing campaign. For one, just take a look at the need of a good tagline.  It has to be credible and catchy.  Catchy in a sense that you attract audiences but credible also, that you don't drive anything preposterous nor drag others down.  Sad to say but such a habit seems to be taken from America's culture of dragging each other down. Competition in business is a reality but don't destroy your ...

Although it's not a very new incident anymore, but I still want to think about how NOT to promote tourism in the Philippines.  An incident in Singapore happened a few weeks ago.  It was a Vietnamese guy that got conned by a Singaporean tourist shop ( Read here ). Here's a Failipino comment that's worth a thousand facepalms from the same article I just shared: It's pure harassment, swindling, robbery, holdup, to a foreign tourist who came from a 3rd world country. Do you think they will do that to a foreigner who came from a developed country. Is this a normal practice in Singapore that they don't explain 1st to the customer the way the warranty should be charged. I said harassment because they threatened the customer that they will not give $600 refund if he call the police. In UNITED KINGDOM, warranty is optional but they charged it 10% of the selling price good for 1 year.   I thought Singapore POLICE is very tough when it comes to customer complain...

This is better yet an objective than a slogan...  As said, testimonials will beat taglines.  While there is Marketing 101 to make your product attractive but basics in business will show these 5 Ps in the whole product/marketing mix.  These are Product, Price, Place, Promotion and People.  All these must work together right?  So let's think of the root cause of the problem that's preventing the slogan from becoming a reality. One can consider the following issues that's rampant in the Philippines.  Its capital Metro Manila has the issues of heavy pollution, high crime, rude people, arrogant people, habitual tardiness, bad workforce and the like which can take away the fun experience.  Sad to say but Pinoys can be easily stereotyped for being rude and crude.  Some Singaporeans face the issue of Pinoy workers who are causing them a lot of problem which in turn, well-to-do Pinoys are really affected in the process.  With Manila as the capi...

In business, it's understandable why there's always a catchy phrase. Taglines make it easy to remember a certain product or service. Now I can go and repeat the same tagline of "It's More Fun in the Philippines" which is catchy but preposterous... it's better served as a mission/vision than a tagline. Let's think about how testimonials will matter over taglines. The problem of the tagline as I said, is it's overly used and abused when there are many taglines that are not misleading yet inviting, credible yet inviting. It's very misleading because you are suggesting that the Philippines is the best place on Earth. The tagline "Yours Truly Singapore" and "Uniquely Singapore" don't brag Singapore to be the best place on Earth. Even Singapore has its issues... no country is ever spared from issues. Now here's the problem of the tagline when the testimonial comes in. Now let's think about the experience of some tourist...