MAJOR hotels in Davao City are already fully booked for the Kadayawan week, one of the lead organizers of the Kadayawan Festival.
During the weekly Kapehan sa Dabaw press conference, Kadayawan Festival director Gatch Gatchalian said the tourism sector is already excited and ready for the upcoming 15 events of the festival which officially opened on Monday afternoon, August 14, at Magsaysay Park.
For this year, Gatchalian said they are targeting to reach at least 168,000 tourist arrivals for the festival just like last year.
“We hope you visit our airport. We spruced it up a bit. You can see the difference that we’ve put up the decors that are Kadayawan-inspired. Our major hotels are already fully-booked. As a matter of fact, we have trouble booking accommodations for our judges because our major hotels could not anymore accommodate reservations, which is actually a happy problem. If we have many guests, we can expect that in the coming days, our airport will be very busy,” said Gatchalian.
Gatchalian also added that they had been doing promotion within Mindanao for tourists transporting through land coming from Cagayan de Oro City, Cotabato City, General Santos City, and other towns in South Cotabato.
Gatchalian said they are expecting around 500 participants to attend the official opening of Kadayawan Festival simultaneous with the official launching of Kadayawan village of the 11 tribes of Davao City, which is one of the biggest highlights of this year’s celebration.
A total of 15 events are expected to make the festival even more colorful and grander as compared to the previous Kadayawan Festivals.
Indak-indak sa Kadayawan, as of Thursday last week, already has 11 provincial contingents and nine Davao-based contingents. Dula Kadayawan is confirmed to be participated by five tribes.
Pamulak sa Kadayawan has six participants for the big category, nine for the small category, eight for the alternative category, and seven participants for the corporate category.
Kadayawan Dragon Boat Race which opened on Saturday, August 12, had a total of 12 teams or about 350 participants. Habi Kadayawan will be participated by 13 designers and 15 product entries.
Nine entries each had already enlisted for the children’s and open category of Sayaw Kadayawan while 10 songwriters are to participate in the Tunog Kadayawan.
For Mugna Kadayawan, a doodle art competition, 20 people had enlisted for the professional category and another 20 for the student’s category.
“The canvass of the participants for Mugna will have a 40 by 8 feet panel board. This competition is in cooperation with Boysen. After the competition, all entries will be displayed in Kadayawan village. So our already festive Kadayawan will be more colorful,” Gatchalian said.
Other highlights of the festival also include Pitik Kadayawan, a new feature involving drum beaters on floats with the Pamulak sa Kadayawan event. Pitik Kadayawan has a total of 12 contingents already.
