“There is a need to balance in the capacity of Bohol as a destination vis-a-vis the capabilities of its people and the use of social media in more productive endeavors for the tourism industry.”
Governor Edgar Chatto said before tourism and hospitality students during the Netizen’s Convention.
According to Gov. Chatto, part of current initiatives for tourism are three major directives on the regulatory role of the tourism office, events management, and the involvement of MICE in upcoming big events for Bohol. Among them is the launching of Digital Bohol in October, the holding of World Economic Forum – Open Collaboration with East Asia New Champions 2016 in November and the ASEAN 2017 meetings in April of next year.
In its development agenda, tourism is an industry for growth and development in Bohol along with agriculture and complementing these is ICT.
In Congress, Chatto authored the Tourism Act of 2009 with Sen. Dick Gordon, which whole concept of tourism includes marketing, incentives, structures, security, tourism, and, public private partnership.
The event, with its theme; “Building Successful Relationship Between Tourism and Social Media”  is organized by the Bohol Tourism Office in partnership with meetings, incentives, conventions, exhibitions (MICE) students of Holy Name University with the support of DOT, Provincial Tourism Council and private sector partners.
For her part, Ms. Ma. Fe Dominise, Head of the Bohol Investment Promotion Center, stressed that social media as a platform now has wider marketing influence than TV due to access, magnitude, and speed, reducing the world into a global village.
There is then, she said, a greater responsibility to be accountable to the truth and the challenge is to build attitude and competencies and to optimize use of technology in order to become winners in terms of creating relationships, creating wealth, and building better communities.
The convention also featured talks from resource persons on social media as a powerful tool for the tourism industry.
During the program, Gov. Chatto inducted the Officers of the Bohol Association of Tourism and Hospitality Educators led by president Paolo Rigotti.
The whole day event coincides with the celebration of World Tourism Day and was attended bu students from HNU, Cristal E College, Bohol Northern Star Colleges, Mater Dei College, BISU Main Campus and Clarin Campus, and the University of Bohol.