The number of passengers who arrived in the Philippines from abroad dropped to 72 percent during the first nine months this year as the country continues to grapple with the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the international travel industry.
Bureau of Immigration (BI) Commissioner Jaime Morente disclosed that only a total of 893,886 international travelers arrived from January to September.
In 2020, a total of 3.2 million arrived during the same period. “This is a far cry from our pre-pandemic figures, wherein we reached 12.6 million arrivals already by the third quarter,” Morente said.
Morente explained that although the pandemic started in 2020, it was in late March that the country closed its borders, so there were already 2.8 million arrivals recorded at the beginning of the year.
“Statistics show that since January the volume of arrivals in our international ports has been averaging at only around 90,000 to 100,000 a month so we foresee this trend to persist until the end of this year,” he added.
The low figures, according to Morente, are due to the daily cap on passenger arrivals as well as the imposed travel restrictions.
Morente also reported a 68-percent drop in the number of passengers who departed for abroad during the first three quarters of the year.
He bared that a total of 1.1 million travelers left the country during the period, compared to the 3.6 million who departed a year ago.
“The bulk of these travelers were overseas Filipino workers as well as foreigners who were returning to their home countries,” Morente said.
Despite the low figures, Morente said the BI is optimistic that the travel industry will bounce back soon, as the country begins to relax travel restrictions following its aggressive vaccination drive against COVID-19.