The Department of Tourism reported that tourist arrivals in the country have already reached the five million mark, surpassing the 4.8 million target for the year 2023, realizing the aim of the Marcos Administration to make the Philippines a tourism powerhouse in Asia.

During her report of accomplishments at the Dusit Thani Manila on Tuesday, Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco said that as of 12 December 2023, 5,069,752 international visitors arrived in the country.

Frasco said the top 10 source market countries for international arrivals are South Korea, the United States, Japan, China, Australia, Canada, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Malaysia.

"We are hopeful na mas tumaas pa to a little over 5 million ang arrivals as our balikbayans continue coming back to our country for the Holiday Season," Frasco told reporters.

In terms of revenue or tourism receipts, Frasco said that the DoT is eyeing to hit P440 billion in conjunction with the 7.7 million tourist arrivals target for 2024.

For this year, tourism receipts were P439.50 billion from 1 January to 30 November 2023.

"We are more than optimistic that next year, we will hit the 7.7 million targets, even though the said target is still short of the pre-pandemic record of 8.2 million international tourist arrivals. This shows that indeed, the world has loved the Philippines and we are thankful to them for choosing our country," she said.

To date, Frasco said that the tourism industry has provided 5.35 million jobs to the Filipino workforce, meaning 11 out of 100 Filipinos are employed in tourism-related jobs since 2022.

"We have pushed very hard to continue to promote the country to the rest of the world, even as we continue to develop our emerging tourist destinations all over the country. We can say that the performance of Philippine tourism this year is robust in terms of economic growth, as we exceeded all expectations," she said.

Challenges

Despite this, Frasco acknowledged that there are still challenges to face next year in attaining those targets, particularly connectivity and infrastructure.

"The Philippines continues to face two major challenges, especially in comparison with its ASEAN neighbors. They are infrastructure and connectivity. That is why we are pushing, through our convergence with the DPWH, to continue to improve tourism infrastructure, as well as to push our convergence with the DoTr, as far as the direction of our President to privatize our airports and to improve the quality of our airports all over the country, as well as extend the number of flights that are coming into the country," she said.

The DoT collaborated with the Department of Information and Communications Technology in December 2022 via a Memorandum of Understanding to improve Internet connectivity in renowned tourist sites and provinces in the country.

"Also, being an archipelagic country, we see the need for investments in marine transportation that will improve connectivity. And we want to increase the number of hotel rooms in the country," she added.