MANDAUE CITY, Cebu, Philippines — Governors attending the 11th East Asia Inter-Regional Tourism Forum (EATOF) general assembly at the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC), this city, Thursday signed a joint declaration of cooperation among EATOF member provinces.

The signing of the Cebu declaration was the highlight of the second day of the event that ends on Saturday, September 17. The governors agreed to cooperate in the areas of academic and government concerns in promoting partnerships for development in tourism, trade and culture.

Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia, who heads the 11th EATOF, hailed the organization as “a model of international cooperation in the push for tourism.”

In her welcome address at the CICC Wednesday, Garcia said, “Here today, we not only share meaningful lessons from each of our own efforts to push the richly diverse aspects of tourism. More importantly, this is a forum where key tourism players from each of our member-provinces can form meaningful partnerships that can work toward our mutual benefit and the further strengthening of EATOF.”

During one of the forums, Takeshi Tsukada of the Japan Association of Travel Agents, said he would like to see more chartered flights in EATOF members. Exchange programs and customer attraction campaigns supported by local governments can lead to more charter flight activity, he said.

“I think it would be beneficial for EATOF member-provinces to actively promote mutual charter flights in their exchange programs,” Tsukada said, citing such arrangements with Taiwan, China, Korea and Vladivostok.