Inside the 5 Families Who Hold a Tight Grip on Philippines Tourism
Skift Take
A handful of families in the Philippines controls 70 percent of the country's tourism industry, owning key travel infrastructure such as airlines, hotels, resorts, shopping malls, and tourist attractions. Is that tight control a formula for future success?
The Philippines has set some lofty goals to reestablish itself as a key tourist destination in Asia, aiming to boost the 7.1 million foreign tourists last year to 12 million by 2022. Most of these tourists, and tens of millions of domestic travelers, will presumably book hotel rooms and flights.
The beneficiaries of all this activity, and those who stand to gain the most, will most likely be just a handful of families who for generations have held a tight grip — some say 70 percent — of the tourism business in the Philippines.
With so much control concentrated in the hands of so few, it raises questions, not least the longstanding one on a disproportionate distribution of tourism income between the haves and the have-nots. With the rich becoming a lot richer, the smaller players, individuals, and communities enjoy merely the crumbs even if they toil as hard as, or harder than, the industry titans.
And what about the dangers of pricing cartels and other collusions, as one i
