Filipinos love traveling, especially now that top budget airline Cebu Pacific Air has made travel destinations accessible and more practical to visit. Joining Cebu Pacific in promoting travel and tourism are innovative individuals who simply love to plan creative budget trips and create itineraries perfect for group travel.
Team Urban Break founder Ian Martinez and WOW Trippers organizer Janine Manaig are just two avid wanderers. They turned their passion for trooping to beautiful local destinations all over the country and enjoying a great time with friends into something even more worthwhile.
An industrial designer by profession, 29-year-old Ian started organizing trips for fun: “I wanted to help my stressed out friends unwind by doing something that’s affordable, exciting and uncommon even just for the weekend.”
In 2008, he started planning out-of-town trips for friends who wanted to learn how to surf. Luckily, most of them found the trips fun and relaxing, and in no time Ian organized more trips to different locations as he formed Team Urban Break (teamurbanbreak.multiply.com).
Janine, who’s into backpacking, trekking and mountaineering, started organizing trip with her adventurous barkada in 2007. WOW Trippers (wowtrippers.com), as Janine’s group is called, decided to start focusing on unknown but must-see destinations in Luzon. Eventually, their leisure trips expanded to other beautiful but remote destinations.
The initial tasks for both Ian and Janine were at first daunting, but the passionate travelers carried on.
“As travel organizers, we first do an ocular of the place we plan to visit before we invite participants to join our travel program,” explains Janine. “The challenge is that we have to travel with different types of people and make the whole experience work for everyone. There are also weather and time constraints to worry about.” As for Ian, implementing his fixed itinerary for a big group is the hardest part, but is the most rewarding, too. “Usually, I bring a staff member along with me or I assign someone from the group to be my main contact person. The best part of organizing group trips is meeting new people. Nothing beats the fun of sharing experiences,” he explains. “It’s one of the best ways to forget about work and to simply relax.”
For Janine, it was simply rewarding to help interested Pinoys travel while keeping their tight budget in check. “Most Filipinos nowadays find it hard to travel because of budget constraints. We want to tell them that traveling doesn’t need to be expensive for it to be fun. By going out in groups and planning in advance, we lessen expected travel expenses.”
Traveling on a budget has truly become a possibility for most adventurous Pinoys nowadays, be it the beaches of Cebu or the sugarland province of Negros Occidental. Making it even easier for trip organizers like Ian and Janine is CEB’s trademark low fares as low as P499 for domestic and P1,499 for international travel, available through www.cebupacificair.com.
Both Ian and Janine both agree that the local travel industry has boomed these past few years, thanks to every Juan’s insatiable curiosity for travel along withthe pioneering efforts of Cebu Pacific. Filipinos should definitely watch out for
more adventures with 7,107 islands to discover and explore which are easily made
accessible by creative trip organizers and low airfares.
