THE SPRING RESORT CAPITAL OF THE PHILIPPINES: TOURISM PRODUCT PREFERENCES AND THE PROFICIENCY LEVEL OF THE LOCAL COMMUNITY

Understanding the market and having a competent workforce are two very important aspects in the field of tourism and hospitality business to ensure sustainability, especially in places where the industry is seen to be a primary source of development. Guided by a descriptive research design and following a quantitative research approach, A total of 770 people took part in the survey, which covered the whole province of Laguna, Philippines , this study has attempted to learn about the market’s preferences on tourism products and to measure the proficiency level of a local community in the Philippines towards tourism and hospitality operations. Findings of this study is expected to help the government and tourism businesses, as well as investors in designing products and services that would sell, eventually resulting in the viability of the industry


A. INTRODUCTION
Market research refers to any strategies used to collect data to better understand a company's target market (Grenier, 2022). Businesses use this data to create better quality products, enhance customers' experience, and craft a marketing plan that helps to attract quality leads and helps to improve exchange rates. Without research, managers will be unable to understand their customers' wants and needs, resulting in a failure to meet their expectations and, as a result, dissatisfaction. Customers are the ones who buy from businesses, so knowing what they like, how much they are willing to spend, what they appreciate, and what they require will provide business managers with a better understanding of what they will be looking for, allowing them to translate their product into something that will sell (Caan, 2013). In reality, successful firms perform on-going research to stay current with industry trends and retain a competitive advantage; whether a company is just getting started or expanding, market research is critical to knowing the target market and growing sales (Madhan and Manikandan, 2017). The success of a business is determined by its capacity to attract and keep consumers who are prepared to acquire goods and services at rates that are lucrative to the firm. Additionally, consumer perception explains how consumers and future customers see a company and its products and services, making it crucial to businesses since it may impact consumer behaviour, which in turn influences a company's profitability. These only means understanding the perception of the market is a must to ensure business' sustainability.
In business, apart from understanding your customers and potential ones, having a competent line of employees is also critical. According to Heathfield (2021), people within a company's entire workforce are human resources; these people contribute their skills and abilities to the firm to help it prosper. A human resource is someone who is prepared to give their work, knowledge, or time for money in order to help the company. Sands (2022) explains that people are an organization's most 2 │ valuable resource; treating employees properly and giving them with opportunity to improve will help firms achieve their objectives. Competence is a quantitative pattern of skills, knowledge, abilities, behaviours, and other traits that individuals must possess in order to execute and complete their job tasks. Competencies are important for ensuring organizational success, enhancing employees' contribution and performance, measuring professional responsibilities and organizational citizenship behaviours such as communication, teamwork, and collaboration, and demonstrating how well employees do their jobs as individuals and in teams (Satyendra, 2020), which is supported by Waruwu et al. (2021) stating that competence has a favourable and substantial influence on employee performance, indicating that the performance of people on their jobs are likely to be dictated by the levels of their knowledge, skills, and abilities.
The market's perception and the competence of human resources are undoubtedly very important in ensuring business success, making these as areas that require more attention, which eventually has led the researcher to do this study. As an educator-researcher residing in a province in the Philippines called Laguna, and specializing in the field of tourism and hospitality, the researcher aimed to determine the preferences of the provincial of market of Laguna towards selected tourism products and services, and the proficiency level of local community of the province's richest city, Calamba City on tourism and hospitality operations.
Specifically, this study aims to meet following objectives:  Orden-Meja et al. (2022) observed in Guayaquil, Ecuador, that individuals favour urban tourism, followed by cultural tourism and traveling with family. This study was done following the COVID-19 pandemic, and it also discovered that people travel with a responsible and supportive attitude, and five variables were identified to have persuaded people to travel: smart care, price strategy, safety, comfort, and social distancing measures. Meanwhile, Porutiu et al. (2021) found that for Romanians, traveling in small groups, especially during the summer, is desirable. Moreover, people are concerned about the location's security and safety, and affordability is a key factor in selecting a tourism destination. Romanians, particularly the younger market, value cultural attractions and adventure travel more than Ecuadorians. Chinese, on the other hand, choose close-to-home locations, particularly local attractions, believing that the predicted losses outweigh the rewards of long-distance travel as compared to shortdistance travel (Li et al, 2021). Safety is also important to them, especially after their experience during the pandemic; they prefer destinations with fewer confirmed cases of COVID-19 to their places of origin, particularly Hubei Province, which could be believed to be due to their perceptions of infection risk, and destinations with more confirmed cases are generally regarded to be unsafe. In a research involving Filipinos, Lañada (2011) discovered that the majority of people arrived at tourism destinations via nonpackage tours and learnt about the location from friends and family. Additionally, most have visited at │ 3 least twice and frequently travel in groups, with beaches and gorgeous sceneries being the top destinations. These findings show that Filipinos, particularly those who participated in the survey, trust travel agencies, acquire knowledge about places from family and friends, like to vacation in groups, and favour beaches and beautiful scenery over other types of tourism attractions.

B. LITERATURE REVIEW
Many studies have previously been conducted to characterize travellers' hotel choices. In a Cross-Cultural Analysis conducted by Rohani et al (2017), it was discovered that tourists from New Zealand paid more attention to safety and security measures than other respondents, whereas Canadians paid more attention to the non-smoking option and advance reservation, which could be attributed to the increasing crime rate in New Zealand and the fact that non-smoking environment is prevalent in Canada. With the exception of business travellers, people from the United Arab Emirates are price-sensitive and favour traditional physical and intangible qualities such as service attitude and bathroom facilities. The case of guests who have stayed in hotels in the United Kingdom provides more variance on the perception of tourists on hotels; it shows that female travellers pay more attention to the hotel's core products and their cosiness versus male tourists, while in terms of the type of food and beverages, men are more interested on pubs, beer and certain types of food that are served on this kind of establishments (Rahimi et al, 2022). Women's remarks, on the other hand, were more likely to be connected to healthy eating, such as handmade, vegan, and vegetarian cuisine, as well as fruits and nutritious breakfasts, while in terms of service quality, they value soft skills such as friendliness, helpfulness, and welcome messages.
Restaurant selection is extremely essential in the tourism industry since it includes the food and beverage sector. According to Chua et al (2020), customers' top priority in restaurant selections for fullservice, quick-casual, and quick-service restaurants was menu price, while the importance level of restaurant selection criteria differed depending on eating-out occasions; the importance of menu price for example was greatest for both quick meal/convenience and social occasion, while brand reputation was the most important factor for business meetings and events, and word-of-mouth recommendation was the the top consideration for personal celebrations. Vu et al. (2017) discovered that some tourist groups, such as Italian, Indian, and French, have a strong preference for their own national food, thus it is vital to consider presenting cuisines based on the nationality of visitors visiting the country. It was also revealed that Western visitors are more interested in visiting to pubs; so, tourism practitioners might expose tourists from this cultural group to pub-dining experiences. Western visitors are more interested about restaurant characteristics than Asian tourists, which suggests that tourism practitioners should emphasize restaurant features, particularly the quality of service, while offering dining alternatives to Western tourists.
A competent workforce is critical in ensuring customer happiness, which leads to business viability. However, according to Ciapponi (n.d.), while labour is the most expensive single expense for hospitality establishments, many hotel and tourist industry employers are suffering a second squeeze in the shape of an industry-wide scarcity of skilled staff. Moreover, while worldwide wealth is increasing, there are less competent tourism and hospitality employees throughout the whole industry, from casinos and cruise ships to restaurants and hotels. Tourism businesses in China for example are struggling to find skilled staff, resulting in a labour crisis (Sun et al, 2021). The same is true in Zimbabwe, where literature evaluation on hospitality and tourism education and training reveals a number of differences between tourism and hospitality manpower needs, bolstering industrialists' outcry that tourism and hospitality programs are not addressing the needs of both the tourism and hospitality sectors, resulting in a gap  (2019), there are disparities in the perceptions of tourism industry professionals and academics teaching tourism courses about the skills needed to succeed in the tourism business. Though both have similar views on important abilities such as oral skills, team working skills, and organizational capacity, academicians place a higher value on strategic skills such as decision making ability, management skills, leadership quality, and problem solving ability, whilst tourism industry professionals place a higher value on operational skills such as critical thinking, workplace ethics, practical skills, attention to detail, adaptability, and customer service skills.
Indeed, there are differences on the perception of people towards tourism products depending on several factors, one of which is nationality. It has also been established that competence among tourism industry workforce continues to be a big problem worldwide. However, it is noticeable that though there are a lot of studies that have delved into these topics, there is dearth of studies that have been conducted in the Philippines, particularly in the province of Laguna, which is a place known to be a tourism hotspot and is strategically located just one ride away from the country's capital. Hence, a research gap that this study has attempted to fill.

C. RESEARCH METHOD
A descriptive research design and a quantitative research approach were utilized in this study. A total of 770 people took part in the survey, which covered the whole province of Laguna, Philippines. The sample size was calculated using Slovin's formula and was equally divided to the number of districts for proper representation from the province's total population of 3,035,081 based on the Philippines Statistics Authority's census in 2015, to determine preferences of the tourism industry market toward tourism products, while the sample population was computed separately from the total population of Calamba City, which is 454,486, to determine the level of proficiency of the local community towards tourism operations. As a result, this study included 55 locals from each of the seven districts, as well as 384 Calamba City inhabitants chosen at random. Data were collected over a two-month period using printed questionnaires and an online survey, and were presented using frequency and percentage for the preferences of the tourism industry market toward tourism products, and mean scores for the level of proficiency of the local community towards tourism operations. The Likert scale used is based on the Competencies Proficiency Scale developed by the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, USA. The aforementioned scale is used to assess a person's capacity to exhibit work expertise. It captures a wide range of aptitude levels and puts them into five grades from "Ignorant" to "Expert". The table 1 discribe it is clear that residents of District 1 and the lone district of Biñan prefer travelling from one province to another within one region and from one region to another, while residents of Districts 2, 3, 4, and the lone districts of Calamba and Sta. Rosa prefer travelling within the province only. The numbers also show patterns in the preferences of the respondents; for districts compose of 2 or more cities and municipalities, the nearer a district is to the country's capital region, which is the case of Districts 1 and 2, the more likely its inhabitants prefer travelling outside the province, while the farther the district is to the country's capital, which is the case of Districts 3 and 4, the more locals favour local tourism. For lone districts, the nearer the district is from Calamba City, the more inhabitants prefer travelling locally, while those who reside in districts farther from the said city prefer travelling outside the province for tourism purposes, with the exception of those who reside in the locale of this study, which is Calamba City itself. In Table 2 data show that the provincial market prefers hotels that are located near the beach and on the mountain side. Those living in places nearest the capital region of the Philippines prefer near tourism attractions and the beach, and least interested in those within commercial zones and on mountain sides with the exception of Calamba city residents who prefer hotels on mountain sides, while those residing in places far from the capital region prefers hotels located near the beach and mountain side over those near tourism attractions and within commercial zones. These results indicate that the people of the province of Laguna as a whole like to stay in places with scenic views and away from the busy streets, where there are barely any noise.  Table 3. Amount willing to be paid by the market for a hotel one night stay

Survey
In table 3 discribe it is noticeable that residents of District 1 and the lone district of Sta. Rosa that are highly urbanized areas are willing to pay more for a one night hotel stay, while those living in Districts 2 and 4 that are less urbanized, and in the lone district of Biñan were the most thrifty or budget conscious when seeking for a hotel room to stay overnight. Overall, people the province of Laguna are budget conscious and are only willing to pay between Php. 1,001.00-Php. 2,000.00 for an overnight hotel stay, which is usually offered by 2 to 1 star hotels or those that are classified as economy hotels. The author also noticed that there are barely 5 star hotels in the province of Laguna, particularly in Calamba City, which could be attributed to these results; there is no demand from the market and there is only a small portion of the population that are willing to pay huge amount of money for a stay in a hotel.   Table 4 results show that the provincial market demand resorts more than any type of accommodation, which could be attributed to fact that the province of Laguna, particularly the city of Calamba is popular as a resort capital of the country. Arguably, it could also mean that the market demands hotels that offer more than just a room to stay and require recreational activities like swimming. Meanwhile, although the numbers are afar, the second preferred type of accommodation is a bed and breakfast or a motel type. This could be linked to the city being at a strategic location, where travellers often pass by, who might need a place to rest for a while. On the other hand, casino hotels are likely to be not feasible in the city given that among all types of hotels, this is the least preferred.  Table 5. The market's preference towards activities offered by tourism attractions Table 5, In terms of preference on types of activities offered by tourism attractions, residents of district 1 prefer educational and sightseeing and relaxing activities, which translates their preference towards cultural-heritage, wellness, and nature-based tourism attractions among others, while those living in district 2 prefer cultural-heritage and adventure tourism attractions more provided their demand on educational and adventurous activities. On the other hand, the rest of the residents of the province prefer adventurous and sightseeing and relaxing activities that indicates their higher intention to go to adventure tourism attractions, as well as those that offer relaxing services and scenic views. Overall, tourism attractions offering adventure experience and relaxation are feasible in the city of Calamba, Laguna.  Table 6. The market's perception on travel agency assistance Table 6 describe It is clear that the preference towards travelling with the assistance from travel agencies among the market is overwhelming across districts except for District 2 and the Lone District of Biñan where residents prefer travelling independently, which means planning their own trip, contacting the hotel, finding a restaurant to eat, locating tourism attractions to visit, and driving their own car or renting one to take them to their destination. This is clear indication that the province of Laguna is an ideal market for travel agencies, arguably because people do not want the burden of bringing their own cars in vacations, and prefers just paying the services of travel companies, so they could enjoy their time off.   It is noticeable that there is an overwhelming preference towards Filipino cuisine, which is not a surprise since respondents are Filipinos. However, this is somehow make some people wonder since the Philippines is known have a colonial mentality since for a very long time, the country has been under the influence of other countries, specifically the Americans, Japanese, and the Spaniards. This could mean that Filipinos still love their own and the taste of local food still likely to satisfy them more. Results also show that there is a growing demand for Korean Cuisine in the province as it places second on the top of the list of all respondents with the exception of those from district 1 and the lone district of Sta. Rosa who prefer Chinese cuisine and Japanese cuisine next to Filipino cuisine, respectively. Survey revealed that the local community of Calamba requires education and training in the field of tourism and hospitality. Clearly, they are not proficient enough to perform the necessary jobs in the tourism establishments. Nevertheless, of all areas, they are more likely to perform best in organizing events, working in restaurants and other food establishments, in the marketing and sales department of establishments, hotel housekeeping, and working as tourism planners and/or travel agents in travel agencies. On the other hand, they are far from having the ability to facilitate tours, and most especially in working at the front office of a hotel. Overall, the local community has a proficient level of "novice" in tourism and hospitality operation, which means that their knowledge was gained solely from on-the-job experience, and that they can only grasp and discuss job-related language, concepts, principles, and issues.

E. CONCLUSION
The market's preferences are essential factors in sustaining business operations; hence, results of this study are very significant in the future of the city of Calamba as a tourism hotspot. As a preliminary study, this study has involved the local market, particularly those people residing in the province where the city is located, and was able to determine what specific tourism products and services are preferred more, resulting in information to what specific types of products and services businesses and the local community should put their attention on. It was found out that travelling outside the province is preferred by most people but the number is not far from the demand on travelling locally, therefore, offering more desirable products and services could influence them to think otherwise. In terms of accommodation, the market perceives hotels near the beach, on the mountain side, a resort type, and offer Php. 3,000.00 and below room rate for an overnight stay most desirable, however, with the absence of a promising body of water that could attract tourists and being at the foot of Mt. Makiling, hotels on mountain sides offering scenic view of the lake with the aforementioned features are more attainable. It is also clear that the local tourists are generally a mix of adventurous ones and those looking for relaxation, hence, tourism attractions in the city must focus on offering adventurous and relaxing activities as well as providing sightseeing opportunities; recreational activities such as but not limited to zip lining, wall climbing, mountaineering, bungee jumping among others are ideal, as well spas and a trip to the top of the aforementioned mountain to offer a bird's eye view of the city. For the restaurants, Filipino cuisines are still the most demanded; however, the market for Korean cuisine is growing. The market also prefers buffet and casual dining the most, therefore, restaurants with buffet service but in less formal setting offering Filipino and Korean cuisines are highly recommended. In the context of transportation, it was found that the people are not likely to go on vacation bringing their cars and prefer seeking assistance in planning their trips, making the city a promising location for travel agencies. Additionally, the city of Calamba, Philippines despite being one of the most populous and progressive cities in the country, remains to lack competent manpower source in the field of tourism and hospitality. This means that the city is more likely to experience difficulty should it aims to further develop its tourism industry attracting hotel and restaurant brands, and other companies offering tourism products and services as these companies will be required to train newly hires should it come from the local community. This calls for the immediate action of the city tourism office in cooperation with the Department of Tourism to empower the local community in this area through proper trainings.