Complaints about costly domestic airfares to trendy tourist draws like Siargao have virtually exposed the far trickier problem that many of our airports just can’t cope. Contextualizing grievances over expensive airfares, the Transport department last week explained that Siargao airport’s short runway only allows smaller turboprop planes, an operational limitation driving up ticket prices.

(At the moment, PAL, after the government’s prodding, is about to cap the one-way airfare to Siargao at a still pricey P11,000, down from its present P17,000.)

Similarly, Busuanga airport, the gateway to Palawan’s dive sites Coron and El Nido, also suffers from not being able to land jets, the Transport department says. In short, the two airports suffer from economies of scale, meaning if both airports can’t land larger jets ferrying more passengers, there will be no affordable ticket prices soon.

Addressing the shortcomings, the Transport department says it is seriously considering extending the runways of both airports, as well as of other provincial gateways to proverbial tourist draws. Obviously, such plans take time, which only means there’s no quick relief for itchy-footed domestic travelers, egged on by the government’s drumbeats to visit the country’s sights, who suddenly find it’s more costly to tour the country than to go abroad.

A dire prospect that should make harassed Tourism officials even more nervous, since the country’s whole tourism gig is still largely driven by domestic travelers rather than foreign travelers. Still, tourism officials do have enough cause for wanting us to fixate more on foreign visitors. In recent months, devastating news has hounded the government’s tourism efforts. Compared to our neighbors, we were losing out on foreign tourists opening their wallets to spend on our sights.

Still, nothing beats first taking care of the locals, though by doing so we also end up taking care of curious foreigners tempted to commune with the country’s paradisical sunrises and sunsets, which make many Filipinos pleasantly chill.

Anyway, upgrading provincial airports and other tourism-related setups takes priority over anything else like, for instance, spending money on tourism slogans.

“They’re all about promo, promo, promotion. You’re spending lots of taxpayers’ money on these slogans — they keep changing and changing the slogan. How many tourism slogans have we had? And we’re spending millions on these slogans. You could use all this money for building infrastructure,” says footloose Riza Razo, who had visited the country’s 82 provinces and who decried last week the priorities of tourism bosses.

Slogans, in fact, do stink once insufficient infrastructure realities bite. As one former Asian Development Bank official candidly said recently, travel in the country often feels “more hassle than fun,” a biting takedown of the country’s long-running slogan, “It’s more fun in the Philippines.”

Promoting internationally also seems wanting. It seems tourism officials concentrate only on a few key foreign markets, a shortsightedness that led to only one European airline offering nonstop flights to Manila, while similarly traffic-choked Bangkok has weekly direct flights from Paris, London, and Rome.

Of course, the infrastructure needs of domestic and foreign tourists lie beyond the doors of swanky airports. Making travel easy for both natives and foreigners alike is also about fixing essentials like efficient transport services wherein trains, ferries, and buses have fixed routes and schedules; a reliable one-portal information hub on lodging costs as well as on local cuisine beyond fast-food joints; and lastly, clearly organized tour services and guides.

Against those challenges, do you think our fancified, cover-girl tourism top guns have the mojo to tackle and solve them all?