By Brian Jules CampuedAbout 30,000 to 31,000 daily departures in the country are being logged after the holiday season, the Bureau of Immigration (BI) said Monday, Jan. 9.
This number is said to be slightly higher than the 21,000 to 25,000 individuals leaving the country in the first week of December 2023.
Data from the Immigration bureau showed that a total of 13,224,308 departing passengers were processed from January to December of last year.
The month of December saw the highest number of departures which was registered at 1,201,484 passengers.
More than 7 million Filipinos also departed during this period, including overseas Filipino workers and tourists traveling for leisure abroad, BI said in a statement.
“A lot of Filipinos have traveled this year as countries reopened their borders after the pandemic,” BI Commissioner Norman Tansingco said.
The bulk of outbound travelers last year who were foreign nationals consisted of South Koreans (1.55 million departures), Americans (1.19 million), and Chinese nationals (406,000).
Tansingco, meanwhile, said that the bureau recorded a total of 12.6 million arrivals last year, more than doubling the 6.1 million arrivals recorded in 2022.
The list of foreign arrivals also included South Koreans, Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and Australians, among others.
Likewise, the month of December also had the highest number of inbound travelers at 1.36 million, which is almost equal to December 2019’s record of 1.7 million arrivals, the BI added.
“The figures we are seeing [are] a good sign. It shows that revenge travel is real, and that international travel and tourism has regained its momentum after the worldwide lockdowns,” the BI chief stated. – cf