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Planning
with the master;
The Master with a plan
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 FONACIER
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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.
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"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
masters."
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 Manila for his medical checkups
and drops by Cebu occasionally.
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Thirty
years back, So said Fonacier was still flat-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.
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"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
hug," she quoted him as saying.
Lest
the point gets lost on the way to the tribute, So made sure
it is driven home.
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