MANILA – The Philippines has received 75,564 Japanese tourists since the country reopened its borders to international tourism last Feb. 10.
According to the latest data from the Department of Tourism (DOT), Japan is the Philippines sixth top tourism source market this year next to the US (385,121), South Korea (285,583), Australia (96,297), Canada (89,248), and the UK (77,267).
Based on the same data, the Philippines welcomed a total of 2,025,421 visitors as of Nov. 14.
Majority of the arrivals or 1,487,343 are foreign tourists, while 538,078 are overseas Filipinos.
“Our latest figures have reached well beyond the 1.7 million tourist projections of the DOT. This goes to show that there is such a huge demand for travel into our beautiful country and that the Marcos administration’s prioritization of tourism is placing our country on the right track to recovery,” Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco said.
“We therefore must meet this with the continued implementation of enabling mechanisms that will convey not only the country’s openness to welcome more tourists but also conduciveness to tourism business and livelihood opportunities for our fellow Filipinos,” she added.
Meanwhile, India (41,292), Singapore (39,801), Malaysia (35,128), and Vietnam (32,970) also made it to the top ten list of countries with the most tourist arrivals to the Philippines.
The DOT further said that tourism revenues reached an estimated Php 100. 7 billion from February to September 2022, a 1938.14 percent increase from the Php 4.94 billion for the same period last year. - Florenda Corpuz
