Chinese Tourists to Surge as Cebu-China Flights Up

Cebu’s local economy gets a big boost as local and foreign airlines mount more direct flights to China from Mactan-Cebu International Airport (MCIA) this quarter.

Starting September 1, the Philippine Airlines (PAL) will double its Cebu-Beijing operations, currently served twice a week, until October 27 using an Airbus A321 aircraft.

It has also opened its Nanjing service on July 9 while its subsidiary PAL Express mounted charter flights to Hangzhou on July 6.

Last month, local and foreign carriers also launched a number of additional flights to China to accommodate Chinese tourists traveling through MCIA during this period.

Cebu Pacific has also started its twice weekly chartered flights to Beijing on July 16 while Philippines Air Asia’s maiden flight to Shanghai was launched on July 7.

It is now offering daily flights from Cebu to Shanghai Pudong Airport and vice versa.

China Eastern meanwhile launched its Cebu-Chengdu and Cebu-Nanjing flights on July 2 and July 25, respectively, with both routes operated thrice weekly.

It also upgraded its Cebu-Shanghai service from an A320 to the wide-body A330 aircraft starting July 1 until September 1.

With this new development, Chinese tourists are expected to flood Cebu in the months ahead amid the onset of China’s peak travel season.

This is seen to further boost Cebu’s booming economy with huge impact on tourism service providers like hotels, car rentals, local package tours, shopping malls and restaurants among others.

“We are mindful of the fact that our traffic growth in Cebu will be driven to a greater extent by our visitors from China. As such we have taken various initiatives to prepare for this growth,” said Louie Ferrer, president of the GMR-Megawide Cebu Airport Corporation (GMCAC).

For its marketing initiatives, the GMCAC has partnered with the Department of Tourism (DOT) in producing “how to” videos detailing the airport processes and Cebu destination marketing videos.

These videos are being promoted through MCIA’s social media accounts on WeChat – China’s top messaging and social media app – as well as Facebook.

For an efficient and seamless travel through Mactan Airport, GMCAC has installed way-finding and informational signage in both Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 with Mandarin translations, as well as Hangul and Nihongo translations.

This is to ensure that all airport processes and directions are well understood by Chinese, Korean, and Japanese passengers.

Currently, MCIA has eight partner airlines, flying both commercial and chartered flights to 10 destinations in mainland China.

In the first half of 2018, MCIA has served a total of 5.76 million passengers, with positive projection to reach its target of 11.2 million air passengers by the end of the year.

DOT Central Visayas regional director Shahlimar Hofer Tamano echoed the same forecast with the opening of the Terminal 2 facility while he also noted a 75 percent hike of Chinese tourist arrivals to the region last year.
Last year, Koreans remain the top foreign visitors in the region followed by Chinese nationals and Japanese ranked third, according to the DOT-7. (Fayette C. Riñen with GMCAC PR)