Rosette Adel – Philstar.com
April 25, 2024 | 5:00pm
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines has welcomed over 2 million international tourists to the country as of April this year.
In its latest report on Wednesday, the Department of Tourism said that based on its monitoring’s data, the country tallied 2,010,522 international visitors as of April 24, 2024.
Of these, 1,894,076 or 94.21% are foreign tourists, while 116,446 or 5.79% are overseas Filipinos.
The DOT said that these figures are 15.11% higher than the international arrivals recorded in the same period last year pegged at 1,746,630.
Last March 5, the recorded international tourist arrivals to the Philippines reached over 1.2 million.
For January to April, the DOT said that South Korea is still the top source market of inbound visitor arrivals, contributing 546,726 or 27.19 % of tourists entry to the Philippines.
This was followed United States comes with 315,816 tourists or 15.71%, China with 130,574 (6.49%), Japan with 123,204 (6.13%), and Australia with 88,048 (4.38%).
Ranking sixth to tenth top source markets, respectively, are Canada, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Germany.
Meanwhile, the country’s international tourism receipts hit P157.62 billion from January to March 31, 2024.
The DOT said that this translates to an estimated 120.70% recovery rate from the P130.59 billion revenue gained from the same period in 2019 or the year before the global travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.
In the entire 2023, the Philippines registered an estimate of P482.54 billion international tourism receipts, 124.87% higher than the P214.58 billion visitor receipts in 2022.
Given these figures, Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco said that her agency sees a “positive trajectory for the country’s tourist arrivals.”
“We are glad that the collaboration and collective effort and hard work are materializing into figures that are beneficial for the entire industry,” Frasco said.
“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,” she added.
For 2024, the DOT is targeting a baseline target of 7.7 million international tourist arrivals, close to its 8.26 million inbound visitors recorded in 2019.
