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FILE PHOTO: President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. and Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco led the awarding ceremony of the Department of Tourism’s flagship program, the Tourism Champions Challenge (TCC), at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) last April 15, 2024
The Philippines has already received over two million international visitors this month, the Department of Tourism (DOT) reported on Wednesday (April 24).
The country’s tourism receipts from January 1 to March 31, 2024, have also accounted for around PHP157.62 billion, which translates to an estimated 120.70 percent recovery rate from the PHP130.59 billion revenue gained from the same period in 2019 or the milestone year for Philippine tourism before the global lockdowns and industry standstill.
Based on the Department’s monitoring data, as of April 24, 2024, a total of 2,010,522 international visitors entered the country, with 94.21 percent or 1,894,076 of the country’s total international arrivals delivered by foreign tourists, while 5.79 percent or 116,446 are overseas Filipinos. This is 15.11 percent higher than the international arrivals recorded in the same period last year pegged at 1,746,630.
South Korea maintains its spot as the Philippines’ top source market in terms of inbound visitor arrivals with 27.19 percent or 546,726, followed by the United States that delivered 315,816 (15.71 percent), China with 130,574 (6.49 percent), Japan with 123,204 (6.13 percent), and Australia with 88,048 (4.38 percent).
Canada, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Germany ranked sixth to tenth, respectively.
“The Department of Tourism sees a positive trajectory for the country’s international tourist arrivals this year. We are glad that the collaboration and collective effort and hard work are materializing into figures that are beneficial for the entire industry. 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,” Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco said.
This year, the country is targeting to welcome 7.7 million international visitors, nearly its pre-pandemic record-breaking achievement in 2019 which ended with an estimated 8.26 million inbound visitor arrivals.
“Guided by the vision of the Marcos Administration and through the approved National Tourism Development Plan (NTDP) 2023-2028, we are confident that we will sustain our goals for the industry not only in terms of attracting visitors to come to the country and entice them to travel but ultimately, to give more employment to Filipinos. We are grateful as well to our partners both from the public and private sectors for continuously helping the DOT in realizing its goals towards sustainable tourism development,” the tourism chief added.
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