Hotels and art museum to rise at Mount Samat Shrine

PILAR, Bataan – Mayor Alice D. Pizarro of this town has revealed three prominent hotel-restaurant proprietors and an art curator are eyeing to establish hotel and recreational facilities atop the historic Mount Samat National Shrine, in upland village of Liyang here.

Mayor Pizarro is optimistic that the new positive development would motivate more investors in transforming the site into a world-class World-War II memorial haven   and one of the premier tourist spots in the island of Luzon as the third flagship project in the country of Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA) under the Department of Tourism (DOT).

She identified the prospective hotelier-locators as Engineer Eusebio Aquino, owner of Plaza Hotel situated at the heart of Balanga City and Wilbert Lee, owner of Oriental Hotel in the Freeport Area of Bataan (FAB) in Mariveles town and a banker, Jodie dela Cruz, an art curator, who is opting to put up a Museum of Modern Arts.

Another significant tourism plan of the DOT is the reported concreting of the seven-kilometer   access road estimated to cost some P 200 million from the Mount Samat Shrine to Dunsulan waterfalls which would provide alternative refreshing destination for visitors, Mayor Pizarro said.

Mayor Pizarro, University of the Philippines Tourism alumna, said Bataan Governor Albert Raymond S. Garcia and Mrs. Vicky S. Garcia, chairperson of Bataan Peninsula Tourism Council Foundation Incorporated have projected the tourism master plan intends to create a truly Filipino ingenuity of globally unique war memorial shrine as an everlasting recognition to the valiant stand of veterans defending the Bataan Peninsula as the last bastion of democracy in the South East Asia.

The Mount Samat National Shrine was built sometime in 1967 remains a top tourist attraction in the province and in Central Luzon and the expected improvement of facilities would hasten local economy and an dynamic growth engine which would ignite agro-industrial prosperity and new eco-tourism dimension of attracting foreign and local visitors.