The international tourist arrivals in the Philippines in the month of January 2017 had risen by nearly 16.48% year-on-year to as much as 631,639, as revealed by the Department of Tourism (DoT) last Friday.
The tourism arrivals in this month was able to generate a revenue of R21.681 billion in tourism receipts, as reported by the DoT. The January statistics for touist arrivals portray quite an impressive growth.
Initially, the number of tourists who had arrived in January 2016 was 542,258, as per the DoT.
Wanda Tulfo-Teo who is the tourism secretary mentioned in a statement that they are required to maintain the momentum of the growing tourism sector in Philippines, since they are currently in the process of implementing the National Tourism Development Plan for 2016-2022 that aims to unlock the true potential of the regional tourism industry of this country.
She went on to add that the hosting of the Miss Universe pageant on 30th January 2017 added to the impetus.
Apart from that, Wanda Teo also observed a sharp increase of tourist arrivals from China that portrayed a growth of about 76.46% from January last year and rising to develop as the third biggest market.
Also, she added that they have started witnessing the results of the efforts of President Rodrigo Duterte to reach out to China. She feels that this has triggered the creation of more economic opportunities for Philippines, also thanks to the ties between Beijing and Manila.
South Korea continued to be the biggest visitor market with 154,367 arrivals.
It was followed by the United States with 99,435 tourist arrivals, China with as many as 85,948, Japan 51,516 and Australia with 27,826.
Canada had registered 24,352 visitor arrivals, Taiwan 21,926, United Kingdom 15,747, Singapore 12,000 and India at 11,805.
The official statistics also indicated that the average daily expenditure amounted to P38,823.
The tourists had stayed in the country for about 10.61 nights.
