Tourism Secretary Maria Christina Garcia Frasco insisted that tourism receipts, or expenditures by international inbound visitors, are more important rather than foreign tourist arrivals in determining whether the country’s tourism industry is robust or not.

In 2024, the Tourism Secretary reported that tourism receipts totaled P760.5 billion, exceeding the 2019 level of P600.01 billion, or 126.75 percent above pre-pandemic tourism industry performance.

“We will (definitely) work towards exceeding the visitor receipts of P760 billion, in which I believe the numbers we must focus on not just physically counting the number of foreign arrivals in the Philippines against ASEAN counterparts. The question should be 'How much has tourism been contributing to the economy, and how many people are being employed by tourism?'” she said in an ambush interview during the ceremonial signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Department of Tourism and budget carrier AirAsia on Thursday at the DoT Auditorium.

She said the DoT, through the help of various stakeholders, is fully committed to improving the country’s tourism receipts this year.

“This inflow of tourism receipts gives livelihood to our kababayans. In addition to that, we are fully committed to further growing our domestic tourism market, currently valued at over $66 billion. These are the numbers na dapat bigyan ng pansin,” she said.

Frasco’s comment was amid the missed target of 7.7 million foreign tourism arrivals for 2024, only posting 5,949,350 international visitors by the end of the year 2024.

Muslim friendly airline

Meanwhile, Secretary Frasco and Air Asia Philippines chief executive officer Ricardo Isla signed the MOU for the airline to be recognized as a Muslim-friendly airline, the first airline to have the distinction among the carriers operating in the country.

The MOU mandates Air Asia to provide halal-certified meals in all its flights, as well as marketing and integrating the “Love the Philippines” campaign of the DoT.

The DoT, on the other hand, will recognize Air Asia as a partner in promoting Muslim-friendly tourism in the country and provide workforce training to further enhance the airline services.

“Halal tourism globally is one of the largest sectors of tourism. Its value is growing exponentially, precisely because it touches upon so many countries. And so, in the Philippines, we are making great strides to ensure that we acknowledge the things to do to make the country Muslim and halal-friendly. This includes ensuring that all our hotels and resorts are halal-friendly, as well as the assurance that we have halal-certified restaurants,” said Frasco.

Frasco said the DoT is open to collaborating with all airline players to promote halal tourism, hoping that the partnership with Air Asia is just a first step in the many other collaborations that they will have, recognizing that the Philippines for two years in a row was recognized as Muslim-friendly destination in Asia.

For his part, Isla said Air Asia this year is more aggressive in increasing domestic flights, although they treat international travel as important as local travel.

“That, therefore, is a big contribution as far as our tourism programs in the Philippines are concerned. In terms of serving halal meals, our airline has served 535,000 halal food. We are also currently working on opening flights from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Mindanao to further grow our presence there and push the country to be a halal-friendly nation,” Isla said.