PAL labor dispute taking its toll on Mindanao tourism, tuna sales

By Jocelyn R. Uy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
2:08 am | Wednesday, October 12th, 2011

The ongoing labor dispute at the Philippine Airlines (PAL) has taken its toll on Mindanao’s tuna sales and hotel occupancy, according to the Tourism Congress.

Initial losses in booked business have been pegged at about 30 percent while hotel occupancy has slumped 50 to 70 percent, said Jaime Cura, vice president of the private-sector led Tourism Congress.

“This was  due to the canceled hotel bookings for conferences, banquets, and other functions of out-of-town groups and entities that had been previously confirmed,” Cura explained Tuesday.

The region’s tuna industry alone was losing roughly P50 million a day since the PAL Employees Association (Palea) staged a wildcat strike two weeks ago, which resulted in major flight cancellations, he noted.
Citing a report from the local chamber of commerce, Cura said the figure was the corresponding revenue value of a daily shipment stock of about 20 to 26 tons of tuna that failed to reach buyers because of flight disruption.

“This was the gist of reports coming from operators of hotels and resorts, travel agencies and tours, land, sea and air transport, and meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions and other tourism enterprises,” Cura said.

Regional consultation

The government-recognized organization of tourism industry stakeholders held a regional consultation meeting on Saturday,  gathering representatives of tourism-related enterprises in South Cotabato, Saranggani and General Santos City.

Cura said the reports from the meeting somehow validated the concerns that the PAL labor dispute would negatively affect the country’s tourism promotion efforts, “which were presently being stepped up vigorously.”
Palea staged a work stoppage on September 27 to protest the airline’s move to lay off 2,600 workers from its call center reservation, catering and ground handling service departments.

Cura said that participants in the Congress decided there was a  need for “preplanned cooperative arrangements” among the various tourism sectors and enterprises in anticipation of eventualities that may have adverse effects on the sector.

“One of the immediate actions that can be implemented to mitigate the negative effects of crisis situations affecting tourism is for the concerned sector to promptly issue a  ‘situationer’ which the Tourism Congress can speedily circulate to the rest of its stakeholders,” he said.

Flight cancellations

In this way, the affected sectors, including the tourism industry, would be able to come up and implement stop-gap measures, he added.

The Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) said that PAL canceled on Tuesday 72 international and domestic flights because of lack of manpower.

However, PAL said that it canceled only one flight Tuesday—PR477/478 Manila-Butuan-Manila, due to an approaching storm. It said it operated a total of 84 flights Tuesday (42 domestic and 42 international) out of Naia Terminal 2 and 3, using a scaled-down flight schedule effective October 7.

PAL volunteers and service providers have taken over the posts vacated by striking Palea members.
PAL earlier announced that 95 percent of its international flights and 60 percent of its domestics flights were back to normal operations.