Lanterns go Green

For the annual UP lantern parade, the message was care for the environment
RECURRING DRIZZLES did little to dampen the festive spirits of the students, professors, staff and spectators who participated in the University of the Philippines’ annual Lantern Parade last Dec. 18.

The tradition dates back to December 1922, when the first informal parade took place in what was then the UP main campus along Padre Faura. In 1934, UP president Jorge Bocobo institutionalized the event as an annual affair.

This year’s theme— “Kapaskuhan, Kalikasan, Kinabukasan”—was a call to action for environmental conservation, a call made louder and more urgent because of Typhoons “Ondoy” and “Pepeng.”

The parade was led by the UP ROTC Symphonic Band and the UP Corps of Cadets.

The Center for Women’s Studies carried a train of rainbow-hued cloth, and posters promoting the advancement of women’s rights.

The College of Architecture with a towering bee in a garden of bright plastic flowers and the College of Arts and Letters paraded a burning white candle atop a dioramic flooded earth.

The Asian Institute of Tourism paid homage to nature with “PanagBEEnga,” a bee structured out of paper and fresh flowers. It was a concept adapted from Baguio’s Panagbenga Festival.

The School of Library and Information Science showed a flora specimen; the College of Education, a tree rooted in books, bearing “fruits” of environment-friendly practices; and the National Institute for Science and Mathematics Education Development, a myriad of aquatic animals, fronted by a whale shark capable of shaking its paper mache head.

Tourism on the road to recovery, HRAB claims

Baguio tourism industry is on the road to recovery and is seen to fully bounce back in time when this mountain resort celebrates the annual Baguio Flower Festival or Panagbenga in February next year.

Hotel and Restaurant Association of Baguio (HRAB) president Anthony De Leon told reporters Tuesday that the 15th staging of the Panagbenga is undeniably a tourism booster as proven in the previous flower festivities.

Some indicators of booming tourism in Baguio is the expected 90 to 92 percent hotel and inn occupancy rates, days before the main activities are held, while 100 percent occupancy rate is expected during the street dancing and parade of float portions of the festival.

There are 26 major hotels in the city with combined 1,777 rooms but even transient facilities are fully occupied during the Panagbenga celebrations.

But ahead of next year’s festival, HRAB officials and their partners in the Department of Tourism heaved a huge sigh of relief with the marked increase in the number of local and foreign participants in the recently-concluded 60th Fil-Am Invitational Golf Tournament held at the Baguio Country Club and Camp John Hay fairways.

The perfect participation of the six Cordillera provinces, including Baguio City, in the recently concluded WOW Philippines Cordillera’s Best also indicated that the city’s tourism sector is starting to gain its momentum after the cancellations of conventions following Typhoon Pepeng’s wrath.

Baguio lost a sizeable amount in terms of projected revenues due to event cancellations like the 2009 Advertising Congress (AdCon) when the city was isolated for three days due to the closures of major arteries leading to Baguio.

But De Leon said that with the innovations and other improvements to be undertaken with the overall staging of the Panagbenga, the tourism sector will be back on its feet.