MANILA – Stakeholders of the Philippines’ tourism industry are seeing bright prospects for the industry next year as it rides on the growth momentum of the sector’s 2019 performance.
“With the proper combination of infrastructure development, accessibility and pricing, 2020 could very well be another banner year for Philippine tourism,” Tourism Congress of the Philippines (TCP) president Jose Clemente II told The Philippines Star.
“We are close to achieving our target arrivals for the year and… we are on track to surpass last year’s tourism revenue. So all in all, 2020 is looking very good.”
Latest data from the Philippines Department of Tourism (DOT) showed that foreign arrivals in January to October grew 15% to 6.8 million from 5.9 million a year ago.
This puts the Philippines on track to meet its 8.2 million foreign arrivals target for 2019 under the National Tourism Development Plan 2016-2022.
“Of course (arrivals) numbers are very important but, for us, how much was earned is more important,” Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat said in an earlier interview.
“Figures have shown that we are on the right path as far as tourism is concerned. Numbers are up in most of our target markets as the Philippines continues to become a preferred destination in Asia,” Mr Clemente added.
“More and more markets that did not notice us in the past are now engaging us for tour programs and products.”
Ms Puyat stressed the need to target alternative markets, noting that this would also help boost tourism revenue.
“And of course not only promote sun and beach, we’re also actually – we just met with our tourism attaches and our market representatives and we agreed to not only focus on our major markets, but also our alternative markets like South America. They actually don’t know that we exist,” she said.
“So we’re are going to be looking at alternative markets – strengthening alternative markets so that we don’t only rely on our primary market.”