Cebu gains much from PAL golfest
Credit to Author: Tempo Online| Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2019 18:00:52 +0000
Cebu benefited economically from the successful staging of the 72nd Philippine Airlines Interclub Golf Tournament – or PAL Interclub – which was held at the Alta Vista Golf and Country Club, Cebu Country Club, Club Filipino and Mactan Airbase Golf.
Cebu-based blogger Nimrod Quiñones, who is currently general manager of Alta Vista, estimated that more than R36 million was pumped into the local economy during the two-week tournament.
“Sports are the best ways to bring people together and when people gather, it means money will be spent,” said Quiñones.
A total of 60 “International” teams – whose players hail from far away countries – represented more than half of the teams at the Seniors Tournament, indicating the global lure of the PAL Interclub.
The roster for both Seniors and Men’s tournaments included teams and golfers from San Francisco, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Riyadh, Guam, Sydney, Honolulu, New York, Hong Kong, Guam, Melbourne, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, London, Auckland, Haneda and Toronto.
“There are 101 teams of eight players each playing in the Seniors’ division, starting from the three-day practice rounds onto the four-day tournament proper. Let us round it off to 800 players plus probably 400 more people travelling with them. Let us not include the cost of their airline tickets, and just have a conservative estimate that each of the 1,200 people gathered for the event will spend P30,000 for the week. That alone is already P36 million spent at the golf courses, hotels, restaurants, department stores, on transportation, bars, medicine and many more,” he said.