Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat is banking on the growth of emerging markets as well as China’s dominance in foreign tourist arrivals to achieve the Philippines’ 2018 target of 7.4 million tourists.
“This is will be driven by more connections, affordable rates, and aggressive market activation, as we work double time in diverting focus on other destinations given the temp closure of Boracay,” she said Tuesday at the annual membership meeting of the Makati Business Club.
Government figures showed tourism arrivals grew 11 percent to 6.62 million in 2017.
China, which is the second largest source market for foreign tourists following Korea, accounted for 968,447 tourist arrivals in 2017, up 43 percent from 675,663 in 2016.
The first-ever direct charter flight from Xiamen, a coastal city in Fujian province of China, to Puerto Princesa, Palawan inaugurated in February this year is seen to further boost the market for Chinese tourists.
The new route is expected to offer up to 591 international air seats bound for the Philippines a week, or a total of 30,732 seats per year.
Puyat also noted that total tourism receipts rose 44 percent to P448.6 billion in 2017, up 43.9 percent from P311.7 billion in 2016.
“This was driven by the increase in arrivals, length of stay, daily expenditure, foreign exchange and increase in airline receipts. Average daily expenditure in 2017 was $126 and length of stay was 9.3 days,” she said.
Puyat cited the DoT’s growing capability to create new and more jobs for Filipinos. Industry employment rose 0.9 percent to 5.3 million from 5.2 million in 2016, accounting for about 13.1 percent of the total employment last year.
To help sustain arrival growth, the Tourism Department has launched the “It’s More Fun in the Philippine Farms” and revived the “Bring Home a Friend” program as part of a strategy to attract 12 million tourist arrivals by 2022.