The Philippines has already received over 2 million international visitors in the first months of this year, with South Korea taking the lead in visitation.

According to a press statement by Philippines Department of Tourism (DOT), the country’s tourism receipts from January 1 to March 31, 2024 have accounted for around PHP 157.62 billion (USD 2.72 billion).

This translates to an estimated 120.70 pc recovery rate from the PHP 130.59 billion revenue gained from the same period in 2019 or the milestone year for Philippine tourism before the global lockdowns and industry standstill, says the statement.

Based on the Department’s monitoring data, a total of 2,010,522 international visitors entered the country, with 94.21 pc or 1,894,076 of the country’s total international arrivals delivered by foreign tourists, while 5.79 pc or 116,446 are overseas Filipinos. This is 15.11 pc higher than the international arrivals recorded in the same period last year pegged at 1,746,630.

The statement says that South Korea maintains its spot as the Philippines’ top source market in terms of inbound visitor arrivals with 27.19 pc or 546,726, followed by the United States that delivered 315,816 at 15.71 pc, China with 130,574 at 6.49 pc, Japan with 123,204 at 6.13 pc and Australia with 88,048 at 4.38 pc.

Christina Garcia Frasco

The statement adds that Canada, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and Germany ranked sixth to tenth, respectively.

“The Department of Tourism sees a positive trajectory for the country’s international tourist arrivals this year. We are glad that the collaboration and collective effort and hard work are materialising into figures that are beneficial for the entire industry. We are hopeful that with more investments in tourism infrastructure as well as much needed increase in connectivity as well as improvements in air, land, and sea infrastructure and accessibility, the numbers can further increase,” says Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco.

Philippines DOT says that this year, the country is targeting to welcome 7.7 million international visitors, nearly its pre-pandemic record-breaking achievement in 2019 which ended with an estimated 8.26 million inbound visitor arrivals.

“Guided by the vision of the Marcos Administration and through the approved National Tourism Development Plan (NTDP) 2023-2028, we are confident that we will sustain our goals for the industry not only in terms of attracting visitors to come to the country and entice them to travel but ultimately, to give more employment to Filipinos. We are grateful as well to our partners both from the public and private sectors for continuously helping the DOT realise its goals towards sustainable tourism development,” the tourism chief adds.