The Philippines experienced strong growth in terms of visitor arrivals last year, but remains a long way short of its targets.
The country’s Department of Tourism has revealed that a total of 5.36 million overseas travellers visited the Philippines in 2015, up 10.9% year-on-year. The country’s international visitor revenues climbed 5.9% to PHP227.6 billion (approx. US$4.9bn).
But despite strong promotional efforts, including the “It’s more fun in the Philippines” campaign, the country remains well short of its target of 10m overseas visitors.
South Korea was the Philippines’ largest visitor source market last year, providing 1.34m arrivals, followed by the US (779,217), Japan (495,662), China (490,841) and Australia (241,187).
Tourism is one of the largest employers in the Philippines, supporting approximately five million jobs.
