The Philippines breached the 2 million mark in international arrivals, surpassing the baseline target of the Department for the year 2022.
Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco announced the good news in a forum in Makati City on May 14, 2023.
Citing the latest data from the Department of Tourism (DOT), Secretary Frasco said the country recorded 2,002,304 international visitor arrivals from January 1 to May 12, 2023, already exceeding the entire year’s target for 2022 of 1.7 million foreign visitors.
“Notwithstanding our challenges and difficulties that our country has faced, a pandemic and the various calamities that come into our shores the good news is that this has done nothing to break the Filipino spirit or to diminish the beauty of the Philippines,” Frasco said.
“Because of the priority given for Philippine tourism by the Marcos Administration, we’re very optimistic for the prospects of our country in terms of being a tourism powerhouse in Asia anchored on the strength of our Filipino culture as well as the values of sustainability, resilience, and global competitiveness. We are at the cusp of the massive success of tourism in the Philippines. You can feel it, you can hear it, you can see it, it’s our time Philippines, it’s our time to become Asia’s leading tourism powerhouse, and with your help, we can achieve just that,” Frasco said.
South Korea delivered almost a quarter of the total number of visitors for the Philippines with 487,502 (24.35%) followed by the United States of America in the second spot with 352,894 (17.62%); Australia with 102,494 (5.12%); Canada with 98,593 (4.92%), Japan with 97,329 (4.86%) to complete the top 5 source markets.
Rounding out the top 10 are China (75,043), Taiwan (62,654), the United Kingdom (62,291), Singapore (53,359), and Malaysia (36,789).
Php 168.5 billion visitor receipts
Citing the same report, DOT recorded Php 168.52 billion in inbound visitor receipts from January to April 2023. This is 782.59 percent higher than the Php 19,093,427,035.59 in tourism revenues generated in the same period last year.
