Philippines Tourist Arrivals Hit 500K Mark In January 2016

This is the first time in the history of Philippine tourism that the 500,000 mark has been breached in the first month of the year, the Department of Tourism (DOT) said on Thursday.

DOT Assistant Secretary Rolando ‘Alan’ Canizal said tourist arrivals to the Philippines reached 542,258 visitors or a 13.17 percent growth versus the 479,149 for the same month last year.

“This show unprecedented and sustained robust growth in the past 61 months or five years,” Canizal said in a text message.

“The growth is stimulated by aggressive campaign on “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” and the markets receptiveness to the ‘Visit the Philippines Again 2016’ campaign,” he added.

Canizal said the department meanwhile expects the strong performance of the industry to continue this year as the industry is gearing for aggressive marketing activities and international events.

He said that these events include high-profile events such as the holding of the ASEAN Tourism Forum in January and increasing awareness of the country’s product offerings.

Among top markets, Korea still topped the list of markets with 147,165 visitors this month which is 27.14 percent more than one-fourth of the total arrivals to the country.

Claiming the second spot on top markets is the USA with 84,506 visitors constituting or 15.58 percent of the total visitors this month. This is also 9.90 percent higher than of 76,896 in January 2014.

Despite territorial disputes, China made third on the list of top markets with 48,708 visitors or 8.98 percent of the total arrivals.

Japan is fourth top market with 41,691 visitors or 7.69 percent of the total visitors this month followed fifth sport Australia with 25,274 arrivals or 4.66 percent of the visitors this month.

Rounding up the top 10 visitor markets are Canada with 21,108 arrivals, Taiwan with 15,523 arrivals, United Kingdom with 15,072 arrivals, Singapore with 13,404 arrivals and Malaysia with 11,068 arrivals.

As for receipts, the country generated an estimated PHP21.94-billion worth of earnings from tourism activities for the month of January 2016.

The Average Daily Expenditure (ADE) for the month of January 2016 is PHP4,904, Average Length of Stay (ALoS) of tourists in the country for the year is at around 10 nights while average per capita expenditure of visitors for the month was PHP50,561.

Top three spending markets is Korea with visitor spending at PHP6.21-billion followed by USA with visitor spending at PHP4.26 billion and Japan with visitor spending at PHP1.64 billion spent.

Among the top 12 markets of the country, visitors from Canada recorded the highest per capita spending for the month of January with PHP56,088, followed by Germany with PHP53,039 and USA with PHP50,462.85. (PNA) JBP/ANP