Phl expects 2.1-M visitor arrivals by year-end, TCP said

After two years of strict mobility restrictions and a lull in domestic and international travel, tourists are returning to the Philippines with the industry expecting the number of visitors to reach more than two million this year before returning to pre -pandemic levels by 2024, the Tourism Congress of the Philippines said.

In an interview with Daily Tribune's digital show Straight Talk, TCP president Jose Clemente III said the group now projects around two to 2.1 million visitor arrivals by the end of 2023, more than double their initial projections.

"We opened February 10, and then with the initial number of people that came in and then build up, build up build-up, I was like, wow, this is more than we were expecting," Clemente said.

According to the Department of Tourism, 1.82 million foreign visitors entered the country between February and October 22.

Of those, 1.3 million were foreigners, and 507,610 were Filipinos living abroad who were either overseas Filipino workers ready to return home after years away or those who were returning for a short visit.

Number of tourists arrivals

Clemente said tourism contributed about 13 percent of the country's gross domestic product, generating almost P3 trillion to national, international, and domestic revenues combined.

While this year's arrivals have exceeded the private sector's projections, this is still a far cry from the 8.26 million who arrived in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Around 8.2 million tourists arrived in the Philippines in 2019, primarily from South Korea, China, the United States and Japan.

However, tourist arrivals decreased by 82 percent to 1.5 million in 2020 due to the extreme lockdown and border restrictions brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

While the Philippine tourism sector is recovering this year, Clemente acknowledged that it might take some time before foreign arrivals reach pre -pandemic levels.

"We employed 5.5 million direct employment, and that constitutes about 10 percent of total employment in the Philippines plus the fact that we generate foreign exchange, which we will badly need moving forward as an effect of the pandemic," Clemente said.

Pre-pandemic levels

Clemente said they met with Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco two months ago and had a "very healthy exchange" of the industry's concerns moving forward from the pandemic.

"She will be meeting with other departments relevant to our concerns, and hopefully, we can meet again sometime in the future for feedback," Clemente said.

"Concerning her new strategies, we've seen some of the ideas coming out in the last hundred days or so that they've been at the DoT," Clemente added.

He also pointed out that they welcomed the idea of retaining the "It's more fun in the Philippines" slogan. He said it's something that the stakeholders feel very strongly about.

"We were a bit concerned when there was the talk of maybe changing it, but now that the announcement was made that we're retaining it, then we're happy about it, and we're more than happy also to give more ideas on how we can make it more fun," Clemente said.

Clemente pointed out that "It's more fun in the Philippines" worked well for the tourism industry because it encapsulated what the country is about in terms of activities in terms of the country's destinations and attractions.

"It also encapsulated the people by nature Filipinos like to have fun, and we like having visitors, and when we have visitors, we have wanted to have fun also, and so totally describes us," he said.

"And it's come to the point that in the years that we've been using 'It's more fun in the Philippines,' that when you mentioned the word fun to our partners abroad, immediately the association is with the Philippines," he added.

According to Clemente, the tourism sector expects a lot more moving forward. However, he acknowledged that mobilities are still around in 2022.

Clemente said the interest from international countries continues to be high in the Philippines.

"So, I think we will recover these pre -pandemic numbers by 2024," he added.