The most awaited event for travel agents and tour operators, as well as our beloved tourists who love travelling inside our country is the Philippine Travel Mart. This event was made by the Philippine Tour Operators Association (PHILTOA) wherein the tour operators can sell their products directly to the tourist/consumers in a retail price. Most people join this event because of the tours’ low rates and promos. The event happened from September 4th until the 6th, these dates where perfect because it happened in the weekend wherein it’s the days that employees, families and students can go visit the event booths.
It is my rest day every Saturday and it happened to be one of the event days. Yearly, I participate in this event not because of the requirement of the professors but as a solo traveller. I find great deals and great buys inside this event. This year, not much changed compared to the last year’s event but as expected some itineraries changed and became more exciting and more adventurous. But before we tackle about the itineraries, let’s first discuss about the booths. Of course the Department of Tourism’s (DOT) booth was always in the center and due to this it is always a show stopper. It is always located in the entrance, always in the center and usually it is the booth that eats up the most of the space. DOT’s booth was composed of the local provinces’ regional departments, government tourism offices like; TIEZA, NCCA AND NPDC, and of course fun games with freebies and food. What I love in the DOT’s booth is the brochures of fully loaded information about a certain province/area in the Philippines, they also gave lanyards, pins, bag tags, and the most important of them all; Maps. The next booth is the flag carrier’s booth, Philippine Airlines. This is the booth most attendees line up to get the greatest value for money in air travel. Next booth is our low-cost airlines, Cebu Pacific. This also has lots of queues and has great deals, sometimes they offer the “Piso Fare”. Usually airline booths have cut-offs in order to save some deals for further days of the event. Some booths also include popular travel agencies like Rajah, West Travel and Tours and many more. There are also marine/water transport companies like 2GO.
The best part of being in this event is the things you can buy excluding the packaged tours and plane tickets; you can buy much more than that. In my case I bought travel magazine which costs only 40-50 pesos each, these are not the latest issues, this are the back issues. I collect travel magazines for the sake of great information you cannot find in the internet and some great experiences from the authors of the articles/bloggers. Moreover, you can buy DOT’s “It is more fun in the Philippines” merchandise here; bags, shirts, hand fans and many more. You can also buy some local products that will truly help our economy, as they say “Love your own country’s products!”.
It is disappointing that this year I haven’t bought a package. First, because I don’t have enough funds, second, I think I won’t have enough time to travel due to lots of paper works and events from school and lastly, this time I want to travel with my family. But even though I didn’t buy packages I think that this year’s travel mart event is a blast! I can’t wait for next year’s event and I am hoping that in that time I can buy and join one of the tours.
