Tourist arrivals up in first 10 months of ‘11

“Visitor arrivals to the Philippines continued to yield positive gains during the 10-month period by generating 3,185,866 visitors and posting 11.96% growth rate compared to 2,845,573 arrivals for the same period in 2010,” the government agency said in a recently released statement.

The DoT said the industry’s growth is due to the “consistent positive growths recorded on a month-to-month basis.”

“The month of July produced the biggest arrivals [for this year] with 360,784 while the month of February posted the highest growth at 18.52%,” the agency stated.

Benito C. Bengzon, Jr., DoT assistant secretary for internal tourism promotions, elaborated that the uptick in tourist arrivals for the first 10 months of this year was due to the strong performance of the country’s short-haul and new tourist markets.

“[The growth] can be attributed to the strong performance of our short-haul markets including Korea (27.85% growth rate), Taiwan (26.21%) and China (25.97%); and our new markets such as India (61.49%), Russia (35.13%) and Saudi Arabia (28.69%),” he said in a text message yesterday.

“The increase in flight frequencies, including chartered flights, more interesting and diverse tourism products and additional room capacity helped fuel the growth for the period,” Mr. Bengzon added.

According to the DoT’s data, most of the tourists in the country came from the East Asian region, which accounted for 1,283,965 visitors or 47.44% of the total tourist arrivals in the country during the 10-month period.

It was followed by North America with an 18.97% share of the total number of visitors.

The region covered by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations came in third with 8.49%.

The fourth top contributor of visitors to the Philippines was the Australasia/Pacific region taking up 5.65% share of arrivals.

“Arrivals from this region grew by 14.85% against its arrivals of 156,617 the previous year. It comprised 5.65% of the total visitor volume,” the Tourism department said. Northern Europe was fifth largest tourist contributor accounting for 4.06% share of total arrivals in the country.

The DOT noted that the region “recorded an increase of 10.38% versus its output of 117,182 arrivals the previous year.”

Ranking visitor markets by volume, the deparment’s data showed that Korea still remains to be the biggest source of tourists in the Philippines.

“It shared 23.76% of the total or 756,863 arrivals. It registered a double-digit growth of 27.85%,” the DOT said in its statement.

Last year, Korea brought in a total of 592,004 visitors to the Philippines.

Korea was followed by the United States which brought in 512,436 visitors, or a share of 16.08% of the total number of tourist arrivals in the Philippines; Japan with 311,402 visitors or a share of 9.77%; China with 195,982 visitors or a share of 6.15%; and Taiwan with 153,575 visitors or 4.82% share.

Mr. Bengzon said they expect tourist arrivals in the country to continue increasing in the following months with the recent inclusion of the Puerto Princesa Underground River (PPUR) in Palawan in the new Seven Wonders of the World. “The inclusion of PPUR in the list of new seven wonders will help increase the number of foreign and domestic visitors in the area,” he said.

He added that “the DOT is expected to accelerate the implementation of the National Tourism Development Plan as it moves toward its target of 10 million foreign visitors by 2016.”