By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo | Special to the BusinessMirror
STILL committed to its 10-million target for foreign visitor arrivals in 2016, the Department of Tourism (DOT) is launching a new promotion dubbed “Visit Philippines Again” next year.
Tourism Secretary Ramon R. Jimenez Jr. made this announcement during his presentation on the “State of Philippine Tourism 2010-2014” at the Third Philippine Tourism Forum (PTF) on Thursday at the SMX Convention Center.
Describing it as an “economical” campaign, he said: “We wanted to create a program that actually induces revisiting or new visits because it is a stronger retail orientation. We’re trying to put together packages and rewards and inducements so that when a tourist returns to the Philippines for a second or fifth time, he will get discounts.”
He told the BusinessMirror that these discounts and reward packages would be made available through airlines, tour operators, travel agencies and other tourism service enterprises. “We are now in the process of gathering their inputs and securing their operation on this.”
He added that part of the advertising component for the 2016 advertising campaign will emphasize last year’s main events, but tagged with an “again.” “So this would mean Madrid Fusion Manila ‘again,’ MTV Evolution ‘again,’ etc. Of course, we have new things like the ‘World Street Food Festival’ for the first time in the Philippines. We try to use the peoples’ money wisely.”
Jimenez stressed that the current Visit the Philippines Year (VPY) 2015, has been instrumental in posting the gains in visitor arrivals this year. “We are accelerating faster than expected. The July numbers are fantastic! We hit 489,000 visitors in July,” which is 14 percent higher than arrivals in July 2014. On a month-on-month basis, the July 2015 arrivals were 25 percent higher than the June 2015’s 390,486 visitors.
He said he expected the foreign visitor arrivals to strengthen further toward the end of the year. “June is usually a trough in terms of arrivals. So we’re coming out of the trough faster than expected.”
He noted that even the arrivals from mainland China are encouraging. Chinese tourists grew by 19.4 percent to 32,495 in June, year-on-year, arresting the previous months’ slowdown. The DOT chief expressed optimism that the tourists from China would continue to grow steadily. But he stressed that tourism receipts, more than the headcount, will give a more accurate picture of the state of the country’s tourism sector.
During his presentation before participants at the PTF, he said foreign visitor receipts hit P275 billion in 2014, a staggering 70-percent increase from the P162 billion recorded in 2006. Said visitor receipts account for 7.6 percent of the Philippines’s total exports of goods and services, and ranks tourism third in top export earners of the country, after miscellaneous items (P911 billion) and semiconductors (P695 billion).
He also noted that domestic tourism receipts reached P1.5 trillion in 2014, a 240-percent jump from the P441 billion recorded in 2006. Domestic travel has grown by leaps and bounds that it now represents 16 percent of total final household expenditure, i.e., most households now spend on domestic travel. “Most tourism expenditures in 2014 come from accommodation services [35 percent] and shopping of tourism goods [15 percent],” he said.
About 4.8 million persons, Jimenez underscored, are now directly employed in the tourism sector, up 16.2 percent from 4.13 million in 2010. “Thus, tourism employment now represents 12.5 percent of total employment. This means about 125 for every 1,000 employment is in the tourism industry.”
In addition, the tourism industry has expanded by 143 percent to P982.4 billion in terms of direct gross value added from P405 billion in 2006; the industry now accounts for a 7.8-percent share to the economy. It ranks fifth in contribution to the gross domestic product, after manufacturing, trade, real estate and agriculture.
Jimenez is hopeful with these trends set by the tourism industry under the Aquino administration, the DOT’s proposed budget of P3.61-billion for 2016 would be approved by Congress. “If you ask the congressmen, I think they consider tourism underfunded. We’re one of those areas where they wish we had more money.” The proposed DOT budget also includes funding for the National Parks Development Committee (P209.19 million) and the Intramuros Administration (P444.21 million).
Carrying the theme “The Business of Tourism: Asean and Beyond,” the Third PTF was organized by the Philippine Tour Operators Association, and also serves as a pre-event conference to set the tone for its 26th Philippine Travel Mart (PTM) this weekend at the SMX Convention Center.
PTM is the biggest annual travel trade exhibition in the promotion and marketing of domestic and
inbound tourism.
Image credits: Photo by Department of Tourism