At the recent AMCHAM forum on tourism, the new IPAT director Rubén Blades presented some short, medium and long term objectives in broad terms, and humbly asked for suggestions. It was his first public presentation in his new job, and he had to leave before hearing all the give and take of the following panel discussion.
IPAT has a website, and Blades has an office in ATLAPA, so it should not be so difficult for people to forward their suggestions to him. The Panama News, however, will make suggestions through this editorial.
First and foremost, although the pledge to get rid of any employee who doesn’t work --- essentially to eliminate what we in Panama call “botellas” --- is admirable, it’s mostly beside the point. Last time we checked IPAT had a payroll with about 800 people on it, and even if all of these people are honest and hard working, salaries simply take up too much of the money that should be spent on publicity for Panama’s tourist attractions. Costa Rica, which does very well promoting its tourism, gets by with about 120 people in its government tourism bureau. It’s a painful necessity, one that should not be “justified” by casting undeserved aspersions on those who will need to go, and one that ought to be mitigated by shifting some of the folks whose positions are eliminated to some of the new jobs that the agency ought to create, but IPAT really does need a drastic overall reduction in personnel.
Blades’s suggestion that IPAT should change its advertising practices is well taken. It should probably do its own marketing research and ad production, either in house or by contracting out the work but not the “administration.” It should certainly do its own ad buying, leaving out the extra costs of working through intermediaries. If the IPAT payroll should not be a political patronage plum tree, neither should the IPAT publicity budget be a subsidy for Panama’s ad agency cartel. In the past Panama has paid far too much for the amount of publicity we have received.
IPAT, in conjunction with various private businesses that have a stake in this country’s tourism, should acquire some assets abroad. Specifically, there should be a properly outfitted large bus, suitable for bands on concert tours or delegations of indigenous artists working the pow wow circuit, permanently stationed in North America. It might also be worthwhile to make a similar investment in Europe. Wherever the bus goes, there should also be a Panamanian tourism booth with information about visiting our country. With the right alliance, we could be selling airline tickets to Panama at the booth. A constantly traveling and frequently changing Panamanian cultural road show up there would surely result in a greater influx of tourists down here.
Cruise ship tourism involves a constant conflict between cruise lines that want to limit the time that passengers spend ashore, both as a function of their scheduling needs and because they would prefer that people spend their money aboard the ship, and our national interest in having passengers spend more time and money in Panama. We should explore some creative new compromises and incentives. For example, and even if it might offend some of our hotel interests, cruise ships serving as floating hotels could play a tremendous role in boosting the Festival of the Black Christ and Carnival celebrations in the Interior, both of which are presently hampered by a critical lack of lodging accommodations.
People who commit petty crimes should not be penalized by being locked up in our overcrowded jails. They should be penalized by being put to work cleaning up the trash along our highways and beaches. We should also borrow some good ideas from the industrialized world, like Germany’s packaging laws and the mandatory can and bottle deposits required in many American states, to reduce the litter. Yes, these are cultural, legal and administrative changes largely beyond the purview of IPAT, but a cleaner appearance is a critical necessity for Panamanian tourism.
It would be advisable to combine IPAT (the Panamanian Tourism Institute) with INAC (the National Institute of Culture) and INDE (the National Sports Institute) into a single ministry. But even without that, closer coordination between IPAT and the sports and cultural scenes would be very beneficial for Panama. There should be a concerted effort to attract NCAA baseball coaches to Panama in January, so that they can scout our national junior baseball tournament. Our Golden Gloves tournaments would be on a much more solid footing if the effort were made to bring in foreign boxing fans for these occasions. Kuna Yala would be more prosperous if an effort were made to bring in tourists for the annual celebrations of the Dule Revolution. There isn’t much excuse for having a cruise ship at Amador when the national soccer team is playing at Rommel Fernandez Stadium, or at Cristobal when there is a boxing night at Panama Al Brown Arena, and not having passengers in attendance at those sporting events.
We should recognize our successes and build upon them. The AMCHAM forum, it must be pointed out, did not do this as well as it could have. Last November’s centennial celebrations were a tremendous tourism success, in which the Rubén Blades concert that Mireya Moscoso tried to prevent played an important role. But totally unrecognized by the old IPAT administration or by the AMCHAM tourism forum was the fact that last November’s tourism triumph was mostly the result of tens of thousands of black people from the United States --- almost all of them of West Indian extraction and tracing roots through Panama --- coming down on charter flights, booking hotel rooms and spending money in this country. And yet it seems that our tourist promotion materials are designed to conceal the fact that there are black people in Panama. We don’t advertise in black-oriented magazines or newspapers, on the US radio stations that African-Americans prefer, or on the Black Entertainment Television network. This country should show more respect for its best customers.
Again it’s a matter largely beyond IPAT’s powers, but for the sake of our nation’s tourism development Blades should insist that the Panama Canal Authority loosen its death grip on the recreational assets it controls. We need greater access for birders to the Pipeline Road. We need controlled cayman and crocodile hunting as a tourist draw in its own right and to make Gatun Lake safer for swimming and water skiing. We need to use the west wing of the Gatun Dam, a large and beautiful amphitheater with the jungle and the lower Chagres River as its scenic backdrop and Gatun Lake as its adjacent swimming hole, to stage large outdoor concerts that are publicized around the world.
Yes, there are many other things that can and should be done and there are insufficient resources to do everything that would be beneficial. It’s not an easy job that Rubén Blades has taken on. But he does take over with tourism as one of the strongest parts of our weak national economy, and the suggestions made here are for the purpose of building upon our past and present successes.
