The Department of Tourism on Thursday hosted welcome rites for a delegation of 1,400 incentive travelers from Korea upon their arrival at Mactan Cebu International Airport in Cebu.
Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco led the initiative to meet the first batch of 300 travelers from the delegation.
The travelers, who arrived at the MCIA via chartered flight KE 9615, are members of the Korea branch of UNICITY—a direct selling company on health functional foods, cosmetics and household items and with over 60 markets globally.
As a reward to their top agents, sellers, and distributors, UNICITY-Korea sends a big volume of incentive groups to Southeast Asian countries annually. This year, the company is sending 1,400 people in four batches from the second to the third week of April 2023.
Frasco said Korea reclaimed its dominant position as the biggest source of tourism arrivals in the Philippines.
Data from the DOT showed a significant uptick in Korean arrivals since last year.
“The good news is that as of today, we have over 1.5 million tourist arrivals to the Philippines and our number one top source market are the Koreans. So we’re very grateful to our friends from Korea for continuing to show their love for the Philippines as they have come back in droves, and the UNICITY group in particular, has come with a delegation of no less than 1,400 individuals,” Frasco said.
Prior to the pandemic, Korea ranked first in terms of visitor arrivals to the Philippines, closing 2019 with 1.98 million Korean tourists visiting the Philippines or 24.08 percent of the country’s total number of arrivals. During the pandemic when travel was banned, arrivals from Korea and from other countries declined drastically to 338,877 in 2020 and 6,456 in 2021.
“Koreans are coming on a daily basis, and the numbers are increasing by the day. Last year, they were at number 2, since the US was our top source market. But this year, the Koreans have reclaimed the number one spot, and we send out the message to all our friends in Korea that you are more than welcome to keep coming back again and again,” she said.
The DOT earlier identified the diversification of the country’s tourism portfolio through multidimensional tourism as among the seven main objectives of the department.