World's First Resort - Airport in Mactan, Cebu - Photos, Video

Breaking News: Mactan, Cebu is aiming to become the world's first resort - airport. With its new Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA), it includes resorts, gardens, shopping boutiques and it has a very wide and nice area.

The consortium of Megawide Construction Corp. and India's GMR Airports have not yet been awarded the contract for Mactan-Cebu International Airport, but they're vowing to turn it into the world's first resort-airport.

Megawide-GMR showed off the new design for the airport on its Facebook page and on newspaper ads.

Louie Ferrer, Megawide chief marketing officer and spokesman, said the Mactan-Cebu airport will be turned into a "resort-airport" facility with 20 aircraft parking stands with aerobridges. It will also have 13 aircraft parking stands to be served by bus transfers.

The new airport will also have separate international and domestic terminals, which will be connected by a link bridge.

"The airport terminals will reflect the rich Cebuano heritage in a state of the art design with a soothing resort-like atmosphere conceptualized by international and Cebuano designers," Ferrer said.

The airport will have 149 check-in counters for international and domestic flights, from the current 44.

It will also have "unique" retail and food shops, airline lounges and an enhanced in-line automated baggage handling system.

The airport will also have an adjoining "village mall" complex.

"The GMR Megawide consortium has proven that it has the credentials, expertise and financial capabilities to take on this prestigious project and deliver an airport that all Filipinos will be proud of and Cebuanos can call their own," Ferrer said. 

The DOTC earlier said it will award the Mactan-Cebu airport project by next week.

The Megawide-GMR group submitted the highest bid of P14.404 billion for the project last December, followed by the Filinvest-Changi consortium with P13.999 billion.

The awarding of the PPP project has been delayed, as Filinvest had sought the disqualification of the Megawide-GMR consortium for the Mactan-Cebu airport project.

Filinvest earlier raised the conflict of interest issue between GMR-Megawide Consortium and First Philippine Airports Consortium, which included Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB). It noted that the managing director of MAHB is also a director of GMR Infrastructure Limited's airport affiliates, who were part of their bid for the Mactan airport project. The company claimed this was a violation of the bidding rules.

Megawide-GMR have refuted those allegations. (abscbn)