The city government here is eyeing to make the Hundred Islands National Park (HINP) an eco-sports hub with the success of the relay race activity during this year’s Hundred Islands Festival celebration.

The race, held last March 15, was called Amazing Race Challenge and was participated in by over 30 individuals who ran, kayaked and trekked from island to island at the HINP and to the other tourist spots in the city.

Cloyd Peter Lalas, head of the Alaminos City Youth and Sports Development Office and event chairperson of Amazing Race Challenge, in an interview on Monday said the event wanted to promote the city as an eco-sport events area and highlight the other tourist spots such as the Lucap Park, Mangrove Park and the marine park.

“Hopefully by next year, following the success of the event, we will be including biking. That way, we could really cover all the other tourist spots in the city. We also have the Bolo Beach and the mangrove area,” he said.

The race started at the Quezon Island where student-athletes kayaked their way following clues as to where to go next until they reached the finish line at the mangrove area.

Students from the Pangapisan Integrated School (PIS) won by only two minutes against those from Golden West College Eagles, followed by the Pangasinan State University Alaminos and the Golden West College Agila.

Alaminos City Mayor Arth Bryan Celeste said the race was at its prototyping phase.

“It is something we want to take advantage since we have the HINP. We would like to use the activity as (a) promotion (activity). Hopefully, later on, we get to invite big names or influencers and they get to market our city and the HINP because at the end of the day, Alaminos revolves around tourism and we want to make sure that we use the proper resources to boost tourism in the city,” he said.

Tourist arrivals in the city reached 438,619 in 2023, allowing the city to earn around PHP44 million tourism receipts. (PNA)