Albay to stage Palaro 2016 as a sports-tourism event

LEGAZPI CITY, May 1 (PNA) — Albay will host the 2016 Palarong Pambansa with a most welcome twist — a touristic adventure for participants and guests in the different venues of the week-long games, scattered around the most scenic places in the province.

Sports facilities for the Palaro are presently being constructed in various strategic sites of Albay’s three districts, all with a panoramic vista of the near perfect cone-shaped Mayon Volcano, which is now included in UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites tentative list. The facilities have an outlay of Php 850 million, Php 700 million of it from the national government approved by President Aquino early this year. Albay shells out the Php 150 million as counterpart.

The games’ main venue is the Albay Sports complex, in Guinobatan town, which will have an international standard oval track and a grandstand that could accommodate thousands of spectators.

Palaro 2016 also opens door to a titillating and mouth-watering culinary adventure for visitors. Albay’s cuisine now occupies a big role in the province’s tourism program, attracting huge crowds. They received overwhelming raves at the recent Madrid Fusion Manila, a global food fair held at the Mall of Asia.

Governor Joey Salceda said while the Palarong Pambansa is primarily a sports event under the Department of Education, it is also an opportunity for Albay—a leading tourism destination in the country—to showcase its hospitality and its global standard tourism sites to the sportsfest’s participants and guests.

Some 15,000 delegates from the country’s 17 regions are expected to join 21 Palaro events, apart from friends, families and visitors. “My guidance to Team Albay, the 2016 Palaro technical working group, is to design a “multi-venue” layout, that shall distribute participants in different sports sites around the province; so they can enjoy our global standard tourism areas while competing,” said Salceda. The 2016 Palaro is Albay’s second time to host the games in 63 years.

With sports tourism still toeing the strict standards of the games, Salceda said Albay plans to distribute the 21 events around the province so participants and visitors also get the opportunity to explore Albay’s best tourism destinations and specialties. Albay’s hosting the games along the line of sports tourism event may go down as first in the history of Palarong Pambansa.

Salceda is the first recipient of the Tourism Star Philippines Award given early this year by the Department of Tourism in recognition of his “exemplary contribution to the Philippine Tourism Industry.”

As the Philippines’ leading province in travel and tourism, Albay was featured at the March 10-13, 2015 Marche International Proffesionels d’Immobilier at the Palais de Festivals in Cannes, France and was featured in many national and international travel marketing sorties like the Berlin ITB 2012, London WTM 2013, Shanghai ITM 2013, and the Department of Tourism promotions in Hong Kong in 2014. (PNA)

RMA/JCN/RSM / http://balita.ph/2015/05/02/albay-to-stage-palaro-2016-as-a-sports-tourism-event/ By Johnny C. Nunez