Cebu among best dive spots in Philippines

CEBU, Philippines — The Philippines, with Cebu as one of the best dive spots in the country, won the best dive destination award in the just-concluded Asia’s diving expo, the Diving and Resort Travel Show in Malaysia.

This was announced by the Tourism Promotions Board Philippines (TPBP), an attached agency of the Department of Tourism (DOT) yesterday.

Aside from Cebu, also mentioned by the TPBP as top dive spots in the country include the neighboring Negros Oriental, Batangas, and Palawan.

“It’s your sign to go on a scuba diving adventure to some of the best dive spots like Batangas, Negros Oriental, Palawan, and Cebu,” TPBP said.

Aside from this award, the DOT is also looking into winning anew the 30th World Travel Awards (WTA) as Asia’s leading dive and beach destination.

Cebu island, for its part, had also been nominated as Asia’s leading wedding destination in the WTA; Intramuros as a leading destination and DOT nominated as Asia’s leading tourism board.

Voting for the 2023 WTA awards opened last February 20 and will end on July 23, 2023. This is open to travel professionals, media, and tourism consumers.

Meanwhile, Cebu has recorded over 2.7 million tourists in 2022, 540,000 of them are foreigners, as per the DOT’s overnight arrival report.

Cebu City ranked number one with 1,063,503 tourist arrivals for 2022 among all LGUs in Cebu. The majority of visitors are domestic travelers and 221,983 are foreigners.

Lapu-Lapu City got over half of Cebu City’s figures with 584,872 tourists (211,896 foreign) and Mandaue City with 369,416 tourists (58,489 foreign).

The municipality of Santa Fe in Bantayan Island topped the LGUs under the Cebu Provincial government with 134,770 tourists last year including 13,561 foreign arrivals. — GAN (FREEMAN)