The Philippines emerged as the fifth tourist destination with the highest drop in visitor arrivals in 2020, based on a survey done by travel platform Next Vacay.
Data showed that the Philippines lost 82.4 percent of its travel traffic in 2020 to an average of 123,545 monthly visitors from monthly 688,409 visitors in 2019.
Ahead of the Philippines were Macau, Cyprus, Malaysia and Thailand. Macau had the highest drop of 85.04 percent to 491,419 from more than 3.38 million tourists in 2019.
Macau was followed by Cyprus with 84.12-percent decline to 52,634 from 331,398 visitors; Malaysia with 83.4 –percent drop to 361,060 from 2.17 million; and Thailand, with 83.15-percent decrease to 558,415 from over 3.31 million in 2019.
Rounding up the top 10 countries that suffered the biggest drop were Mauritius with 77.67-percent to 25,748 from 115,291 visitors; Portugal with 74.71-percent decline to 1.03 million from 4.08 million; New Zealand with 74.38-percent drop to 83,029 from 324,039; Sri Lanka with 73.47-percent loss to 42,309 from 159,475; and, Greece with 72.51-percent decline to 472,477 from 1.79 million visitors.
The report noted that the Philippine tourism sector, which used to contribute about a fourth to the annual gross domestic production during better times, lost $9.76 billion in potential revenues in 2020.
Next Vacay founder and CEO Naveen Dittakavi called on tourists to make a conscious effort to support local tourism and the economy.
Next Vacay is an online search system created to save customers time and money when searching for flights by automatically searching countless airfare sites to find the best flight deals in real-time.
It offers flight deal alert service that sends members emails alerting them to cheap flights.