It is a tribute to the man as much as a tribute the master's emphasis on planning. Sun*Star Daily paid perhaps one of the highest tributes to hotel guru Anos Fonacier when it paid tribute to one thing very close to his heart: planning. It is no mean feat to be given prominent treatment in the country's no. 1 community newspaper's annual Yearbook. Entitled “Footsprints in the sand owed to man with a plan”, the one-page feature article written by section editor Michelle So in Sun*Star's Cebu Year Book 2008 captured graphically Fonacier's penchant for planning. “Old age is a natural sedative. Ask Anos Fonacier who, at 80, has made kibitzing his current lifestyle. What he can't do physically, he makes up for by giving his say on it and everything else,” So opened her article on the man she described a “plan master”.
She noted that much of Fonacier's time these days is idled in Panglao, a place the man describes as “a paradise on earth”. He goes only to Manil for his medical checkups and drops by Cebu occasionally. Thirty years back, So said Fonacier was still fleet-footed when he laid the cornerstone of Cebu 's tourism. He built the Tambuli Beach Club, “the precursor of the beach resorts and hotels that have now saturated Mactan Island ”. Together with partners, Fonacier also established the Cebu Plaza Hotel, the first five-star hotel outside Manila but which he has long since passed on ownership of what is now the Marco Polo Plaza Cebu.
Fonacier accommodated charter flights of international visitors and showed them that in a single destination, the “island in the Pacific,” they could have it all. To the local residents, Mactan became a weekend place. “And so it is that Cebu 's worldwide destination stature is partly owed to the man whose reputation as a Marcos crony preceded him,” So wrote. In 1994, the Cebu City government bestowed on Fonacier, an Ilocano, the honor of “adopted son” for his contribution to Cebu's tourism and business. In 2002, the Philippine Department of Tourism named him Kalakbay Awardee for Lifetime Achievement. “The honor befit a man who broke tourism ground in Cebu and its neighboring province, Bohol, where his Bohol Beach Club is a landmark as famous as the Chocolate Hills,” So pointed out.
Looking back at the path he has built, Fonacier ascribes Cebu 's success to the entrepreneurial spirit of the Cebuanos and the province's locational advantage over other areas of the country. So however made it a point to stress what Fonacier has always done first: planning. “There should be more planning if it's not too late for that. The planning shouldn't be ad hoc. Cebu offers everything and it, therefore, has to plan for its becoming a strategic hub,” she quoted him as saying. Lest the point gets lost on the way to the tribute, So made sure it is driven home. “Planning, planning, planning. In my case, I had to create my plan. My whole perspective is tourism. I can see things they can't see. Access is important. The moment you make it convenient, you open the door to success,” he says.
Fonacier pushes for the entry of budget airlines “because you'd bring tourism to the back routes,” professionalization of tour guides, availability of clean public restrooms, and investment in infrastructure. So notes that at 80, Fonacier remains mentally acute. “Age may have impaired his hearing and restricted his movements, but it has given him the privilege of not having to explain his crankiness to anyone,” she concluded. Now, if only people in the saddle are listening. That's what planning has done for Fonacier. That is what planning can do to Bohol , “if it's not too late for that.”
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