By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo / Special to the BusinessMirror
CHINESE tourists once more powered the visitor arrivals in the Philippines, growing by 30.3 percent in the first three months of the year to 240,354. The performance of the Chinese market comes hot on the heels of the United States, whose tourists in the Philippines grew by 11.6 percent to 258,097 in the same period. South Koreans still continued to top the list of source markets for tourists in the Philippines with 440,865 visitor arrivals for the period.
Total visitor arrivals nationwide increased by 11.4 percent to 1.6 million, data from the Department of Tourism (DOT) showed. The release of the DOT’s visitor arrivals data for March/first quarter had been extremely delayed for reasons even top officials of the agency could not adequately explain. “We’re just getting it from the statistics group,” intimated one DOT insider. “We also don’t know why it’s taking them long to release it.” Usually, updated tourist arrivals data are readily available on the DOT’s web site www.tourism.gov.ph, at predictable monthly publication dates.
But DOT Undersecretary for Tourism Development Planning Benito C. Bengzon Jr., who now oversees the statistics group, told the BusinessMirror: “We were waiting for the finalization of the report on revenue so we could issue it with the statistical report at the same time. The revenue report is not ready yet, so we decided [on Tuesday] to release the one on statistics already.”
He did not explain, however, what was causing the delay in the collection of data on tourism receipts. The last time the DOT delayed publishing its arrivals statistics was in June 2014, as it had to reconcile data with the Bureau of Immigration, which had changed its rules on the filling out of disembarkation cards.
At a news conference on Wednesday, DOT officials again reiterated their optimism that the 6.5 million visitor arrivals target this year could still be reached despite “some” cancellations by foreign visitors, especially South Koreans, to Cebu. The cancellations happened because of the Abu Sayyaf attack in Inabanga, Bohol and when President Duterte declared martial law in Mindanao, owing to the clashes between government troops and rebels in Marawi City.
Bengzon, who had just arrived from Seoul after attending the Korea World Travel Fair last week, said most of the travel agents and tourism executives he spoke with understood exactly what was going on in Mindanao. “They said ‘you don’t have to explain to us what’s happening [and why martial law was declared in Mindanao]. But can you help us with the cancellation fees?’”
He said he has proposed to the local hotels and resorts that they forego the cancellation fees, “on condition that the Korean tourists or travel agencies just rebook their visits at a later date.” In fact, he said, a number of the representatives from Filipino hotels and resorts who had participated in the travel fair, already made such a commitment to the Korean travel executives about foregoing the booking cancellation fees.
At the same news conference, Tourism Secretary Wanda Corazon T. Teo said improved air connectivity has significantly boosted foreign visitor arrivals.
About 98 percent of tourists arrived by air, she said, underscoring the number of new routes that the DOT had been able to open. For the first quarter of 2017 alone, around 788,000 international airline seats have been added to major tourism markets, such as China and South Korea.
She said new direct flights to the country have been mounted from Chongqing, Wuhan and Chengdu (to Cebu); and from Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chengdu and Jeju, South Korea (to Kalibo).
“We encouraged more airlines to mount new flights to our primary and secondary airports to improve connectivity and accessibility to our emerging destinations all over the archipelago,“ Teo said.
Arrivals from Taiwan also grew substantially in the period January to March 2017, reaching 64,896, or an increase of 24.6 percent. India also showed a marked improvement in arrivals, jumping by 21.63 percent to 26,905 in the three-month period.
Other top tourism market sources for the Philippines in the first quarter of the year were Japan at 106,251 (+15.8 percent); Canada at 60,838 (+14.2 percent); and Germany at 29,301 (+2.38 percent).
While still posting huge numbers in arrivals, declines were registered by Australia at 66,807 (down 0.68 percent); the United Kingdom at 47,353 (-3.6 percent); Singapore at 40,395 (-9.1 percent); and Malaysia at 34,411 (-6 percent).
For March 2017 alone, the country’s primary gateway, Ninoy Aquino International Airport, recorded 350,517 in foreign arrivals. This was followed by the Mactan-Cebu International Airport with 113,869 arrivals, and Kalibo International Airport with 68,819 arrivals. Other top gateways were Clark International Airport and the Davao City International Airport.
Image credits: Image courtesy DOT