We left home at 4:00 AM on Monday morning to catch our flight to Manila and onwards to Hong Kong. Now you have to understand that we have this thing about flying in Philippines. We travel with only the National Carrier within the Philippines and no other airline. Sure it cost a little more than the “budget carriers” but they apparently can land their plans in the rain…and it rains a lot here in Philippines during the “rainy season”. So, off we went with Philippine Airlines – the service and flight were flawless as usual. In fact we got into Manila 10 minutes early. Not bad!

I have become a bit of a photo nut. Anything that’s out is a target for my photography. Now, I’m no expert nor could I be considered a photographic artist but, I’m trying. So sitting there on flight PR 144 from Iloilo to Manila I started. It was raining and the forecast was for rain all day!

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Sunrise before arriving in Manila

The clouds look ominous.

Manila’s coming!

Evidence of flooding in Manila

There it is! Home to over 11 million people.

If that’s not flooding, I don’t know what is.

Someone’s getting their feet wet.

After a 2 hour wait, errr stopover,  in Manila we boarded another Philippines Airline flight for Hong Kong and enjoyed a 2 hour flight to “The Pearl of the Orient” on one of PAL’s new Airbus A340s. What a plane!

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Philippines Airlines new Airbus A 340, beautiful plane

I am one of those passengers who just has to have a window seat. I have a problem sitting in any other seat. I get “antsy” and feel nervous, closed in and restricted. When I’m sitting in the window seat I can see outside and feel just fine and can relax as long as I can see “outside”.

After lunch, I spotted some Islands on the horizon…wow that was fast, Hong Kong already? I’m not sure what islands they were but I saw them about 35 minutes before we landed.

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I was amazed on arrival, how fast the arriving passengers were put through the terminal. We got off the plane and within 25 minutes we had gone through all the formalities: Immigration, baggage claim and Customs all done that fast. Unbelievable. These folks really know how to do things right and they treat their tourist right. I’ve been around the world and the way arrivals are handled in Hong Kong should be adopted around the world. Especially in Vancouver and Toronto and especially in  other North American (USA) cities – where the arrival process is interminable with line-ups that never end and move at a snails pace, with baggage that take an eternity to arrive from the aircraft. Everything just takes forever…but, not in Hong Kong, it was a true pleasure. There is a lesson here if people around the world want to take the time to study the processes in Hong Kong so that they can improve their handling of arriving tourists.

Now many people will say in rebuttal that sure that easy for them to do they only handle a fraction of what we handle…Oh, really?

Here are the 2010 Toronto Tourist Arrival statistics:

• In 2010, the Toronto region welcomed 9.9 million overnight visitors, an increase of over 3% from 2009.
• Over 21 million people visit Toronto annually.
• Visitors to Toronto spent $4.4 billion in direct expenditures during their visits in 2010

Vancouver, on the other hand, provides this:

Vancouver’s beauty has made it a magnet for people from all over the world for more than a century. Nearly 9 million people visit the region each year, about 60 per cent of them from Canada. Visits from other parts of the world continue to grow, particularly from Europe and Mexico. Two million people visit each year from the United States.

And finally, Los Angeles, California, the second largest tourist destination in the USA reported:

• Los Angeles tourism volume increased more than 3% to 27 million overnight visitors in 2011. These overnight travelers contributed nearly $14.7 billion in spending to the local economy.
• Travel and tourism generated approximately $1.1 billion in local and state tax revenue in 2011.
• Hotel occupancy in LA County averaged 71.7% in 2011, a +5.9% increase over 2010.
• LA’s 2011 hotel occupancy placed 7.7% above the Top 25 Markets average and 19.3% above the U.S. average.
• The 2011 hotel average daily rate was $123.15, an increase of +5.6% over the previous year.
• The total passengers into LAX increased by +4.7% in 2011 compared to the previous year. The International market saw a larger increase of +5.0% compared to domestic traffic, which increased by +4.6% over previous year.
• Cruise ships docking in the Port of Los Angeles welcomed nearly 610,000 passengers in 2011. The cruise activity at the Port of Los Angeles generated over $225 million in economic benefits to the entire region.

On the other hand, in 2012, Hong Kong received a record-high of 48.6 million visitors from around the world, a remarkable increase of 16.0% over 2011. [2012 figures – within 6 months – other jurisdictions can’t seem to produce stats in less than a year or a year and half – something’s wrong here!

The table below summarises Hong Kong’s tourism performance in 2012-

And finally, Manila – here is an extract of the Department of Tourism report:

Tourism in Manila is an important contributor to the Philippines’ growing economy. As of 2010, Manila city and region are the most popular destination in the country with overseas visitors numbering 1,480,871 in total (2010). In fact, the Philippines welcomed a grand total of about 4,000,000 tourists in 2011.

There is obviously no comparison – Hong Kong has by far the most arrivals and handles them in an exemplary manner…the USA, Canadian and particularly Philippines Tourism and Airport authorities definitely have something to learn here.

There will be another chapter in our Hong Kong, Kowloon and Macau Wanderings in a few days…come back and see us then…

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