JAPAN Cruise Line Inc. (JCL) will be sending another group of Japanese tourists to several destinations in the Philippines in 2018, via its 700-passenger ship, the Pacific Venus.
“We are happy to announce that we will be deploying the Pacific Venus to the Philippines next year,” said Kenji Yoneda, senior managing director of JCL, in a meeting with Tourism Secretary Wanda Corazon T. Teo. “We hope to receive the usual support for the safe and enjoyable stay of our passengers,” he added.
The meeting took place in Osaka on the sidelines of the Philippine Business Mission (PBM) events in Japan from June 26 to 29, according to a statement from the Department of Tourism (DOT).
JCL is one of the midsize cruise lines in Japan, and specializes in the elderly or senior citizens market. The cruise line brought its passengers to Puerto Princesa and Manila in November 2015 and to Bohol, Boracay, Manila and the Hundred Islands in November 2016. It is the only cruise line that has brought predominantly Japanese passengers to the Philippines.
Teo thanked JCL for these cruise visits, and said, “We are confident that with JCL resuming its operations in the Philippines, visitor arrivals from Japan will notably increase to enable this source market to inevitably rise from its present top fourth rank.”
Under the National Tourism Development Plan (NTDP) of 2016-2022, the DOT is targeting to increase visitor arrivals from Japan to some 1.37 million in 2022, from its goal of 618,436 arrivals in 2017. In the first four months of 2017, there were 211,123 visitor arrivals from Japan, up 15 percent from the same period last year. The target for Japanese arrivals in 2022, accounts for 11.4 percent of the 12 million foreign visitor arrivals target in the last year of the Duterte administration.
Cruise tourism is one of the nine product portfolios identified in the NTDP aimed at enhancing the competitiveness of the Philippines as a tourist destination in the Asia-Pacific region. The DOT also completed last year, its National Cruise Tourism Strategy and is participating in the Asean Cruise Brand, both of which will launch local and multicountry initiatives to boost cruise tourism arrivals in the Philippines and the region.
The DOT aims to increase port calls in the country to 402, with 456,164 passengers by 2022. The target markets for cruise passengers are China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia, according to the NTDP.
The Philippines has received regular port calls from midsized cruise vessels of the Royal Caribbean Cruise Ltd. (RCCL) and Star Cruises, as well as smaller expedition cruises from other international cruise companies, such as JCL. This October, RCCL’s Celebrity Cruises will make a port call in Manila via its luxury passenger ship Celebrity Millennium, as part of the company’s 12-nights China and the Philippines cruise itinerary departing Shanghai and finally arriving in Hong Kong.
Data from the DOT show international cruise calls to the Philippines grew by some 28 percent to 72 port calls in 2016, from 56 calls in 2014. The DOT projects 105 port calls this year, with an estimated 122,000 cruise passengers, largely due to the 15-week cruise call of Star Cruises’s Superstar Virgo to Manila and Laoag from March 19 to May 29.
“I am confident that more international cruise operators will find our country lucrative as we go about implementing key measures, such as the development of port and shore-side infrastructure, facilitation of business entry and offering more exciting shore excursions, among others,” Teo stressed.
The DOT’s cruise-tourism strategy identified the “Turquoise Triangle”, which links the popular tourist destinations of Manila, Boracay in Aklan and Puerto Princesa in Palawan; and the “North Triangle” (Currimao/Salomague-Cagayan-Batanes) as major destinations for cruise ships.
The NTDP also calls for the improvement of ports in Romblon, Coron, El Nido, Bohol, Leyte and Iloilo, and the upgrade of ferry services between Cebu and Bohol, Batangas-Mindoro and Misamis Oriental-Camiguin.