Dagupan City Philippines - The 19-day Bangus Festival that showcased the city's No. 1 product, bangus, benefited all sectors, including ordinary citizens -- stakeholders of Dagupan's development.
This was the unsolicited comments from various citizens of the city who participated in the just concluded Bangus Festival held from April 16 to May 4, attended by an overflow crowd from the local population and visitors.
Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez, chair of the 2008 Dagupan Bangus Festival said local businessmen who participated in the festival's Dagupan Great Day Sale admitted that their sales went up despite offering special discount of up to 50 percent on the cost of their goods.
Really a tourist charmer, the Bangus Festival made all hotels and inns in Dagupan fully booked from beginning to end of the festival, Fernandez said.
Ordinary sidewalk vendors, including jeepney drivers, also confessed they were happy because they earned more as compared to their incomes in previous Dagupan Bangus Festivals because of the big crowd that flocked to the city.
"Everybody was saying that the Bangus Festival was very successful and would like to see this same kind in other future festivals in the city," Fernandez said.
She said officials were exulted when people said that the crowd that attended the just-concluded Bangus Festival was thrice bigger than similar festivals held in the city during the previous years," said Vice Mayor Fernandez.
Fernandez said all those they invited to perform, including artists and famous bands from Manila, came to the satisfaction of the crowd that flocked to Dagupan during the Bangus Festival.
Director Martin Valera of the Department of Tourism, said the Bangus Festival is the biggest festival he had seen in northwestern Luzon.
Fernandez thanked his fellow officials led by Mayor Alipio Fernandez Jr., festival's honorary chairperson, for lending their support to the festival and who chaired different events. - Philippine News Agency
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