Tourist arrivals up 11% in 2017

MANILA, Philippines — Foreign arrivals have breached the government’s 6.5-million target for 2017, according to data from the Department of Tourism.

DOT achieved its goal despite falling short of its one million target for Chinese arrivals.

A total of 6.62 million foreign tourists visited the Philippines last year, up 11 percent from 2016.

South Korea remained the country’s top source market for 2017, accounting for 1.6 million arrivals or an increase of nine percent from the previous year.

Following South Korea is China as 968,447 Chinese visited the Philippines last year, up 43 percent.

For this year, Tourism Secretary Wanda Corazon Teo said the DOT was looking at hitting two million Chinese arrivals.

“We continue to welcome more Chinese tourists to the country as part of the improved diplomatic relations between Manila and Beijing since President Rodrigo Duterte’s state visit to China last year,” Teo said.

Apart from China, India also saw a significant rise in arrivals at 18.13 percent to 107,278. This is over the DOT’s 100,000 arrivals target for India.

India closed the year as the country’s top 12  source market.

Other markets in the top five are US  (9957,813 arrivals), Japan (584,180), and Australia (259,433).

Other top source markets were  Taiwan, Canada, United Kingdom, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.