Heritage tourism in Iloilo City: Status, problems, and prospects for development as assessed among tourists

Abstract

This survey study, conducted on December 2016, aimed at ascertaining the status, problems, and prospects for development of heritage tourism in Iloilo City. One hundred and fifteen (115) purposively selected tourists participated in the study. A researcher-made data-gathering instrument was constructed by the researcher to obtain the status, problems, and prospects for development of heritage tourism in Iloilo City. The questionnaire was accompanied by a Personal Information Sheet to gather data on the participants’ personal data. Frequency count, percentage analysis, rank, mean, and standard deviation were employed as descriptive statistics; while the Wilcoxon-Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test, and Pearson's r were employed as inferential statistics. The .05 alpha level was used as the criterion for the acceptance or rejection of the null hypotheses. The study found out that heritage tourism in Iloilo City is a highly acclaimed by the tourists. Although this tourism was assessed by the tourist to have serious but this problems will not necessarily hamper its development and since it was also found to have highly viable prospects for development. Finally, the status, problems and prospects for development of heritage tourism are positively and significantly related. Therefore, it may be concluded that tourists visiting Iloilo City are strongly influenced by the history, culture, events, attractions, and values of Ilonggo people or by the intangible and tangible assets of the city. As the status and prospect increase the problems also arise. In short, heritage tourism in Iloilo City needs to be improved, restored, preserved, and conserved as the time goes by.