Cebú City and Province

[rustyboi]

Originally Posted by rico

so will the movies produced there be in cebuano?

its an international film (boarding) school. most students are from abroad.. it will also attract local film enthusiasts but i doubt if movies produced there are in cebuano

[tyronne]

Originally Posted by rusty18

cebu is coming up with a CLEAN version of manila's EDSA. im sorry to say that EDSA looks so horrible. if we compare it with any country at least in Asia, our streets always look unpresentable.

is this reclamation area in cebu near the sm city cebu? coz that's the only place i can remember when i went there in 1996. sayang talaga i never had the chance to go around cebu that time. i only went to sm cebu and the famous supermarket in downtown cebu (forgot the name). anyway, i have an uncle there and some cousins living in mandaue and cebu city.

[Thunderflip]

Originally Posted by rusty18

IAFT under construction in Mactan Island! The Hollywood of the Philippines...

So, we should kick name this Phillywood or what?

[Robville]

My wife and I booked our trip to Cebu (Dec. 30 to Jan. 4) to escape the Canadian Winter for a short time. We are staying at the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel and plan to take in the sights of the city. When we visited Manila last year, we were impressed with places like Eastwood City, Greenbelt etc. that offered multiple dining establishments and other entertainment aside from shopping malls.

Are there any spots in Cebu similar to Eastwood and Greenbelt that have multiple dining options and bars? If so what is their proximity to our hotel?

Thanks for any input.

[edifice_complex3]

Some pics of the recently finished south road properties

[mysaong03]

hi robville, havent been to cebu ever, maybe our cebuano forumers may help u, or u can just hire a tourist guide as soon as u get there, or just search thru the net, it may provide u w/ wealth of infos, hehe...but if you're like more of an urban traveller, manila is way way better, cebu fits more for nature & laidback or countryside travellers...good luck

[rustyboi]

Originally Posted by Robville

My wife and I booked our trip to Cebu (Dec. 30 to Jan. 4) to escape the Canadian Winter for a short time. We are staying at the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel and plan to take in the sights of the city. When we visited Manila last year, we were impressed with places like Eastwood City, Greenbelt etc. that offered multiple dining establishments and other entertainment aside from shopping malls.

Are there any spots in Cebu similar to Eastwood and Greenbelt that have multiple dining options and bars? If so what is their proximity to our hotel?

Thanks for any input.

hi there... beside waterfront cebu city hotel is the asiatown IT park. there are alot of dining/entertainment establishment in that area ("THE VILLAGE"). they also have CROSSROADS in banilad, just a few kms away from your hotel... its similar to The Village. Ayala Center and around that area has a lot of choices as well.. im sure ure gonna enjoy your stay there

[rustyboi]

Originally Posted by mysaong03

hi robville, havent been to cebu ever, maybe our cebuano forumers may help u, or u can just hire a tourist guide as soon as u get there, or just search thru the net, it may provide u w/ wealth of infos, hehe...but if you're like more of an urban traveller, manila is way way better, cebu fits more for nature & laidback or countryside travellers...good luck

cebu isnt a laidback place anymore. that was perhaps 10 years ago hehe. the good thing is, the city can offer both urban and nature setting tourists can enjoy.. that is why there are more tourists going there..

[rustyboi]

Originally Posted by tyronne

is this reclamation area in cebu near the sm city cebu? coz that's the only place i can remember when i went there in 1996. sayang talaga i never had the chance to go around cebu that time. i only went to sm cebu and the famous supermarket in downtown cebu (forgot the name). anyway, i have an uncle there and some cousins living in mandaue and cebu city.

the reclaimed area where SM is situated is the north reclamation project. the south project is of course somewhere south. hehe... to give u an idea, cebu 5 years ago is different from what it is now... the development is faster than u can imagine. i dunno how.

[renell]

Originally Posted by Thunderflip

So, we should kick name this Phillywood or what?

hahaha.. kick ass name

[kiretoce]

Originally Posted by Thunderflip

So, we should kick name this Phillywood or what?

The city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania first came to my mind when I read "Phillywood."

[rustyboi]

Cebu ranks 7th in Conde Nast tourism survey!
INSIDE CEBU By Bobit S. Avila
The Philippine Star 11/19/2004

That President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (PGMA) has put her bets on Cebu as the nation’s premier tourist destination is bearing fruit, not from praise releases sent from our local tourism-related PR firms and tour publications, but from Conde Nast Traveler, a very prestigious travel magazine. Cebu apparently got a score of 72.8 and thus, was ranked seventh in Conde Nast’s Top Readers’ Choice Awards for the Top 10 Asian/Indian Ocean tourist destinations. All this began with the slogan "Cebu… An island in the Pacific!"

Here’s how the rankings and their respective scores went from the first to the last: (1) Bali, 86.4; (2) Phuket, 82.6; (3) Maldives, 81.1; (4) Seychelles, 80.2; (5) Koh Samui, 79.4; (6) Mauritius, 74.9; (7) Cebu, Philippines, 72.8; (8) Zanzibar, 72.8; (9) Borneo, 69.5; and (10) Lombok, Indonesia, 67.8.

Want to know the methodology used by Conde Nast to arrive at the results of its Readers’ Choice survey? Well, 241,000 subscribers received the questionnaires: 137,000 via mail, with each one getting one of several partial, 16-page editions of the survey, while 104,000 others were invited to a secure website which contained the complete 84-page questionnaire. I got all of this info from the Conde Nast website.

The final tabulation of the 20,167 responses was done by Mediamark Research Inc. of New York City. There were various poll categories (cities, hotels, etc.), with criteria for each. The questionnaires contained lists of candidates (particular cities, hotels, etc.), and a space was provided for write-ins. Only candidates that received a required minimum number of responses were deemed eligible for an award.

For the evaluation, each candidate was rated, criterion by criterion, as excellent, very good, good, fair or poor. Criterion scores, which represent the percentage of respondents rating a candidate excellent or very good, are averaged to determine the final score. For example, the 87.8 score of Sydney — rated the top Pacific Rim city — is the average of its scores for ambience, friendliness, culture/sites, restaurants, lodging and shopping.

The poll categories and their respective criteria: Airlines — ticketing/ground services, cabin comfort, cabin service, entertainment options, and food/beverages (international flights); car rental agencies — staff efficiency, reliability of fleet, vehicle selection/options, locations and rates; cities — ambience, friendliness, culture/sites, restaurants, lodging and shopping; cruise lines — itineraries, crew service, cabin design, food and dining, activities and facilities; islands — scenery, friendliness, lodging, restaurants and activities; hotels — rooms, service, food/dining, location and overall design; resorts — rooms, service, food/dining, location and activities/facilities; and safari — camps, rooms, service, food/restaurants, design/layout and activities/facilities.

I’m sure there are a lot of other tourism destinations in this country like Boracay that should have made it to that prestigious list, but having a great resort or beach is only one of the criteria. There are just too many other factors to consider and it is Cebu’s fortune that it tied with Zanzibar for the seventh or eighth place. Perhaps, the various tourism officers in the different provinces can check out the Conde Nast website and see for themselves the method used so they can use it to check and improve the areas where they are falling behind.

But as I told Tourism Secretary Ace Durano the last time we met, Cebu still needs a lot of work to achieve truly world-class status as a tourism destination. Our biggest dream today is for the Cebuanos to adopt a "culture of tourism" where cleanly dressed taxi and jeepney drivers smile to tourists and speak to them in English rather than take them for a ride, if you know what I mean. As elucidated by my good friend Joel Mari Yu of the Cebu Investment and Promotion Center (CIPC), Cebu is a pretty girl who needs new clothes, a facial, a manicure and make-up, and she would be very presentable to foreign tourists. After all, a happy tourist is the one who keeps coming back!

As it is, Cebu is getting world recognition as a tourist destination despite our almost insurmountable problems. I just hope that the political leadership in Cebu, with the support of Malacañang, gets its act together to improve on what we already have and bring Cebu as close as possible to the number one slot as the most envied tourism destination of the world and that is Bali! This alone shows that there’s no time for Cebuanos to bask in their laurels; it is time to roll up their sleeves and fix whatever that needs fixing in Cebu!

[rustyboi]

Continuation...

That our good friend Anos Fonacier began Cebu’s tourism experience in the 70s, packaging Cebu as an island in the Pacific rather than a part of the Philippines, is a success story told over and over. But tourism isn’t the only strength of Cebu. Direct foreign investments (DFIs), which today account for exports of some $3 billion annually, are also directly linked to Cebu’s tourism growth. Yes, a lot of the executives of Japanese companies that have set up shop at the Mactan Export Processing Zone (MEPZ) came to Cebu first as tourists, and when they realized that Cebu was very livable for foreigners, with good shopping malls, golf course and an international school, they convinced their top officers to relocate to Cebu and a lot of them did so.

Call us lucky that today, there’s still a lot of opportunities coming to Cebu and one of them is the call center industry which employs some 4,000 people working in shifts. Joel Yu of the CIPC has just arrived from an IT conference in Vancouver and New York and he brought the good news that the demand for call centers has not gone down and is even going up. Joel also learned that India is moving out of the call center business as it wants to focus on the higher end called "business process outsourcing." That means more opportunities for Cebu.

[edifice_complex3]

Que paso? What happened to the pictures of the south road projects I posted. The pictures were there yesterday.

[edifice_complex3]

Originally Posted by rusty18

hi there... beside waterfront cebu city hotel is the asiatown IT park. there are alot of dining/entertainment establishment in that area ("THE VILLAGE"). they also have CROSSROADS in banilad, just a few kms away from your hotel... its similar to The Village. Ayala Center and around that area has a lot of choices as well.. im sure ure gonna enjoy your stay there

Rusty, bai, the Asiatown IT Park you mentioned, was this the Cebu Civic & Trade Center before. I didn't know that they changed the name to Asiatown IT Park. I've seen the rendering of this project before and I was quite impressed. Are they still planning to build a civic and trade center inside the IT Park?

[edifice_complex3]

Originally Posted by rusty18

IAFT under construction in Mactan Island! The Hollywood of the Philippines...

The building looks so much like Universal Studios here in LA. I was there recently to try the Revenge of the Mummy ride and the film school building reminded me of the building of the said attraction in Universal Studios. Have they decided a name of the building? Could they name it Universal Studios Cebu instead? (he,he wishful thinkin)

[edifice_complex3]

Originally Posted by rusty18

cebu is coming up with a CLEAN version of manila's EDSA. im sorry to say that EDSA looks so horrible. if we compare it with any country at least in Asia, our streets always look unpresentable.

Is this the South Road Project you are talking about?

[edifice_complex3]

Originally Posted by rusty18

silingan ra diay ta! taga lapu-lapu man ko, hehe... anywayz, im very excited about the IAFTV (internat'l acad of film and tv) which is still under construction. most of the mentors are from hollywood! sh*t they are soo cool...! im very excited to go there this xmas!

the IAFTV soon in Mactan

Silingan ra gyud. Keep on posting pics, bai!

[ryanr]

7th place isnt too bad. But the govt really needs to work on promoting the Philippines and developing infrastructure to attract more tourists.

[rmb]

The philippines should not rely solely on cebu for tourism. Every province has a potential and I hope the current developments on tourism would reach out to other provinces.