The longest chicken inasal grill at the closing of the 4th Bacolod Chicken Inasal Festival, Upper East Megaworld township property on Sunday, May 28, 2023. The grill is 320 meters long with 80 vendors cooking 3,000 sticks of chicken inasal.BACOLOD CITY—Tour guide Virna Ascalona Tan is pretty excited about the brisk business among tour operators and guides these days.
With this, Jessamine Marielle L. Madayag, Bacolod City’s senior tourism operations officer, projects arrivals this year to reach “700,000, with some 70,000 to 100,000” accounted for by visitors during the Masskara Festival in October. Meanwhile, she observed that the European tourists are not so enamored with historical structures in the city “but are into interactive experiences with locals.” This bodes well for the Slow Food Movement, Tan noted, which plans to offer coffee trails and visits to cacao nurseries, positioning the city as a Slow Food travel destination in Asia.
Magalona, who also owns the 58-year-old Bob’s Restaurant, said locals and domestic travelers have aided the local restaurant industry’s recovery: “People come here from Manila, from Cebu, from Davao, so it’s local customers.” Even during the pandemic, he noted, Bob’s restaurants and cafes, “had to remain open, although with a skeleton force, and we divided them among branches.