The Department of Tourism (DOT) could sustain the country’s tourism gains under the administration of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. given the sector’s upward trajectory.
“With this upward trajectory of the performance of Philippine tourism under the Marcos administration, what we anticipate is that in the same way that we were able to exceed our targets as far as visitor receipts are concerned for 2023 that we would be able to achieve the same feat for 2024,” Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco said during the 2024 Post-State of the Nation (SONA) Discussions at the Hilton Hotel in Pasay City on Tuesday.
“However, we anticipate that as far as arrivals are concerned, unless and until we are able to fully ease the convenience of coming into the Philippines especially as far as e-visas are concerned, it does remain a challenge,” she added.
According to Frasco, President Marcos directed the DOT to fully implement the e-visa program, hoping that it will be implemented by the DFA as soon as possible, in cooperation with the Bureau of Immigration (BI).
This is in addition to the forthcoming airport improvements to ensure seamless tourist arrivals in the country.
Last year was a phenomenal year for Philippine tourism, Frasco said, adding that the tourism sector contributed around PhP3.36 trillion to the economy in terms of international and domestic visitor receipts.
“We’ve also seen, according to the Philippines Statistics Authority, the highest ever recorded growth rate in terms of tourism direct gross value added to the gross domestic product. And so the contribution of tourism now to the GDP stands at 8.6 percent,” she pointed out.
“These numbers have translated to that which matters most in everything that we do in the Department of Tourism and in our President’s very clear vision for tourism, that is to provide jobs to our fellow Filipinos.”
Also last year, over 6.21 million Filipinos were employed in the sector, accounting for 12.9 percent of the entire national employment rate. It manifests a strong resurgence of tourism after the pandemic.
Frasco acknowledged the sector suffered complete and utter devastation as a result of the ravages of the pandemic, not to mention all the climate-related crises that affected the country.
And with tourism’s unique challenges, the government could address those issues through collaboration between government agencies, particularly in carrying out heavy government investment on tourism infrastructure development.
“Over 96.6 billion (pesos) was invested by government in tourism in 2023, and tourism investments also amounted to half a trillion pesos. All of this we see to assist Philippine tourism as we move towards being able to recover our pre-pandemic numbers,” Frasco said.
“However, post-pandemic, the view of the world has changed as far as tourism is concerned. In that, we not only see or calculate tourism success as far as the warm bodies that come upon our jurisdiction but rather more importantly, as far as visitor receipts because it is the tourism spending that allows the economy to roll as fast as it should,” she added.
She also added that the Philippines has already recovered with over one hundred percent of its visitor receipts from its 2019 numbers and also exceeded the 94 percent global average of recovery as far as visitor receipts are concerned.
In 2023, the Philippines received over 5.45 million international visitor arrivals, successfully breaching the 4.8 million arrivals target set by the industry.
This year, the country has a baseline target of 7.7 million arrivals. PND
