By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo / Special to the BusinessMirror
THE Department of Tourism (DOT) projects foreign visitor arrivals to reach only some 7.2 million this year due to the closure of Boracay Island. In her year-end briefing, Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat said, “I am not confident that we will reach our 7.4-million arrivals target this year because Boracay closed [for six months]. So it will be, maybe, 7.2 million.”
Despite the six-month closure of the resort island, proclaimed one of the best beaches in the world by international travel publications, arrivals from January to October still grew 7.43 percent to reach some 5.9 million, she said.
The closure mainly affected inbound tourists from South Korea, which slipped 2.72 percent to some 1.3 million. “Boracay is such an important and popular destination, it generates about 80,000 tourists per month. If you compute for the six months that Boracay was closed, that’s close to 500,000 we lost,” said DOT Undersecretary for Tourism Development Planning Benito C. Bengzon Jr.
“While we were able to divert some of the traffic to Cebu, Bohol, and Palawan, there might have been some which canceled outright,” he said. Based on talks with airlines providing charter services, “some [foreign tourists on charter flights] were also diverted to Asean destinations.”
Chinese tourists helped lift total visitor arrivals, as the market grew by 30.71 percent to 1.06 million for the 10-month period. The increase in Chinese tourists has been attributed to relaxation of visa requirements, with the warming of diplomatic ties between Manila and Beijing. However, lawmakers worry that the visa-upon-arrival privilege extended to China was being abused, as some Chinese citizens arriving in the country as tourists actually work in online gaming centers.
Tourists from the United States came in third place with an 8.34-percent increase to 850,735; followed by Japan at 530,228 (up 8.02 percent); and Australia at 220,367 (up 6.74 percent). Because of the strict carrying capacity guidelines in Boracay, which limit daily tourist arrivals to 6,045, Romulo Puyat said the DOT promotes alternative destinations such as Siquijor, Camiguin Island and Siargao, aside from Cebu, the top tourist drawer.
Although the DOT will recalibrate the National Tourism Development Plan for 2016-2022 starting next year, she said the agency will continue to market the Philippines as a prime destination for sun and beach activities, to learn English as a second language, for MICE (meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions) and culinary tourism.
Meanwhile, Bengzon said it was still “too early to make any recommendations” to limit the number of tourists going to Baguio City, as the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has suggested. “What’s important is to make an assessment of the situation with respect to the carrying capacity, as we did in the case of Boracay,” he added.
He said the DOT, along with the DENR and the Department of the Interior and Local Government, are looking at Siargao Panglao “and most other seaside resort destinations, as these are the most environmentally fragile” for the government’s monitoring and rehabilitation efforts. “The local government units and stakeholders are realizing that they need to police their own ranks, and comply with local and national ordinances, so the problems experienced in other destinations will not happen to their destination,” he noted.
Under the NTDP, the DOT targets foreign tourist arrivals at 8.2 million in 2019, and tourist receipts at $6 billion or P318 billion. This may change, however, as the agency revises the NTDP goals, Bengzon said. The DOT is actively promoting the Philippines in so-called “opportunity markets” to beef up the number of inbound tourists. These include Indonesia and Japan, Singapore and Malaysia, India, Russia, France, Spain, Italy and Scandinavia.
“What we want achieve is an optimum mix of source markets so that if any of the major markets take a hit, the smaller markets collectively will be able compensate,” he explained. Other top source markets for the 10-month period to October are Taiwan, which dipped by 0.5 percent to 204,776; followed by Canada, which grew 12.6 percent to 178,134; United Kingdom at 163,015 (up 9.73 percent); Singapore, 144,101 (up 3.64 percent); Malaysia, 120,976 (up 1.53 percent); Hong Kong at 102,947 (up 10.8 percent); and India at 101,622 (up 14.4 percent).