By Hilda Austria/Philippine News Agency
ALAMINOS CITY, Pangasinan — A total of 65,604 tourists visited the famous Hundred Islands National Park (HINP) here from May 1 to 24 this year, the Alaminos City Tourism Office (CTO) announced.
“The trend is still increasing since many are making the most of the summer vacation before the classes start in June (3),” said CTO officer Miguel Sison in an interview on Monday.
He said majority of the tourists flocked the Hundred Islands on Saturday and Sunday posting an average of 5,000 and 6,700 tourist arrivals, respectively.
Sison noted that 13,700 tourists visited the national park on Black Saturday (April 20) alone.
“Most of the visitors went to the Pilgrimage Island where a chapel was newly constructed and St. Claire and St. Joseph statues were newly built,” he said.
The month of May’s figure brought the total number of tourists who visited HINP from Jan. 1 to May 24 to 326,254.
The CTO recorded 561,909 tourist arrivals in 2017 but the number declined by 2.6 percent in 2018 due to weather disturbances, particularly typhoons.
Sison said HINP has 25 main islands of which eight are open to tourists, while the Bat and Monkey islands are just for viewing and the rest are still being developed.
“We used to have only three active islands,” said Sison, referring to Governor’s island, Children’s island and Quezon Island.
“But now we have the Clave Island, Lopez Island, Marcos Island, Monkey Island, Bat Island and the Old Scout Island, wherein a portion of it is the snorkeling area for its corals,” Sison said.
He said the activities being enjoyed by the tourists are banana boat ride, jet-ski ride, island-to-island ziplines, helmet diving, island hopping and swimming, among others.
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