By Brian Jules Campued
Over 2 million tourists have so far arrived in the Philippines this year, the Department of Tourism (DOT) said on Wednesday.
In a statement, the DOT said a total of 2,010,522 international visitors have entered the country as of April 24 — about 1,894,076 of these are foreign tourists, while the remaining 116,446 are overseas Filipinos.
“This is 15.11% higher than the international arrivals recorded in the same period last year pegged at 1,746,630,” it added.
The country’s tourism receipts from Jan. 1 to March 31 have also reached P157.62 billion, higher than the P130.59 billion revenue in the same period in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the world to close its borders.
According to DOT’s monitoring data, South Koreans are the country’s top visitors with 546,726 arrivals. They are followed by tourists from the United States (315,816), the Chinese (130,574), Japanese (123,204), and Australians (88,048).
Meanwhile, ranking sixth to tenth, respectively, were tourist arrivals from Canada, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Germany.
Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco remained optimistic about the growth in tourist arrivals for the rest of the year.
“We are hopeful that with more investments in tourism infrastructure as well as much needed increase in connectivity as well as improvements in air, land, and sea infrastructure and accessibility, the numbers can further increase,” Frasco said.
Last year, the Philippines logged a total of 5,450,557 international visitors which exceeded the DOT’s target of 4.8 million tourist arrivals for 2023.
The country’s record-high number of visitors were achieved in 2019 with an estimated 8.26 million inbound visitor arrivals recorded.
According to the DOT, it is eyeing 7.7 million international tourist arrivals in 2024. – avds
