BAGUIO CITY--Koreans have made the country's summer capital their second home and they want to return the favor by bringing snow here this Christmas.

Yes, snow.

Acting Mayor Reinaldo Bautista Jr. stressed during a press conference on Thursday that this was not a joke. He said Korean entrepreneurs had offered to invest in snow-blowing machines that would be placed atop buildings here to produce snowflakes that would fall on downtown Baguio.

He said the plan was to operate the machines every afternoon during the Christmas season when tourists flock to the city.

"These Koreans have visited modern Asian cities where there are theme park-like activities. Hong Kong and Singapore have fireworks display every weekend to delight residents and tourists. This is something similar," Bautista said.

He said the Korean businessmen also proposed to convert any government facility located in an elevated area in the city into a resort that would offer snow-theme rides such as a snow slide.

"We thought of fixing up [the sequestered Diplomat Hotel] on Dominican Hill here, where they can construct pipe slides where people can slide down on ice and water," Bautista said.

While the proposals sounded absurd at first, he said, they could be feasible.

Coldest city

"Baguio remains the coldest city in the Philippines and it would take less energy to produce snow flakes here during the Christmas holidays when temperatures can reach as low as 12 degrees Celsius," Bautista said.

More importantly, the idea was fresh enough to attract the curious. "Baguio has nothing new to offer tourists anymore, and they're giving us a good idea," he said.

Bautista declined to identify the brains behind the proposal, although he said they were businessmen who set up groceries and schools here.

At least 6,000 Korean students and missionaries are staying in Baguio, according to the Bureau of Immigration. The number excludes Korean tourists who visit the city.

Bautista said the city's failure to keep tourists was best reflected by the latest competitiveness survey of mid-sized cities that saw Baguio in the bottom three in 2005.

Lagging behind

The survey was conducted by the Asian Institute of Management and the Saint Louis University's College of Business Administration. It compared Baguio to the cities of Angeles, Bacolod, Batangas, Butuan, Cabanatuan, Cagayan de Oro, Calamba, General Santos, Iligan, Iloilo, Lipa, San Fernando (Pampanga), Tarlac and Zamboanga.

Bacolod, Batangas, Iligan, Iloilo and San Fernando topped the survey.

In a report provided by the city government, Baguio "had a high cost of doing business, bad vehicular traffic, inefficient provision of basic utilities, insufficient banking institutions, a worsening environment and poor [local government] responsiveness [to] local development."

World-class toilet at PMA

The city government is gearing up for a major infrastructure boom before the end of the year, in part, to make up for the competitiveness survey, according to Bautista.

Part of the investment plan is the construction of a P1-million "world-class" toilet at Fort del Pilar, catering to guests of the Philippine Military Academy.

The PMA draws some of the prominent guests of the city, but the last tour here of the Miss Earth candidates embarrassed officials because the PMA could not offer them toilets.