Baguio City - Philippines Summer Capital - Now Too Hot To Serve As Tourist Hotspot

[hatrack]

AGUIO CITY, Philippines—The Philippines’ summer capital has started to review its tourism plan after realizing it can no longer rely on its cool weather to attract visitors. Metro Manila residents who fled to Baguio this summer to escape the torturous heat wave in the lowlands have not been happy either about Baguio’s average temperature of 18 to 26 degrees Celsius, and this has affected its summer tourist arrivals, said Benedicto Alhambra, city tourism officer.

He said the city government has acknowledged that global warming would not spare the city, based on a set of projections provided by the weather bureau.

The city’s peak tourism season usually begins in November once the temperature drops, and stretches to May when the annual school break starts. Alhambra said this year’s summer visitors did reach 250,000, which represent 80 percent of the anticipated 300,000 summer visitors for the second quarter of 2010. Between 2005 and 2008, tourism arrivals grew from 180,000 to 197,000 in November, and the number shot up to an average of 350,000 by February, according to city government data.

“But visitors like a group of convention center engineers from Mindoro told us the inviting chill of Baguio has not been as pleasant in the last few months,” Alhambra said. “We believe Baguio got tourists this summer because of what I call ‘electourism.’ The national campaign drew busloads of campaigners to Baguio.… They were all over town, buying vegetables and souvenirs.” Tourists have always complained about “a changing Baguio” for decades, but no one has complained about the city being “too warm until now,” he said.

EDIT

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/regions/view/20100522-271471/Tourists-not-too-happy-about-Baguios-heat

[OregonBlue]

1. That's between 65-79 degrees (18-26C), how can that be too hot? I don't get this story.

[The River]

2. I Took Leave There

for a week in '70. Days were pleasantly balmy without too much humidity
and the nights were crisp. Like being in any mountain resort town.