Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 29) — The country has so far recorded more than four million visitors since the beginning of the year, the Department of Tourism said Friday.
From January 1 to September 29, a total of 4,005,465 foreign nationals and overseas Filipinos have arrived in the Philippines. This is near the DOT’s target of 4.8 million visitors from abroad this year.
Of the figure, 91.58% or 3.67 million are foreign visitors and 8.42% or 337,426 are overseas Filipinos.
This is nearly double the 2.65 million tourist arrivals recorded from February to December 2022.
Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco said the tourist arrivals recorded within nine months have brought ₱316 billion to the economy.
“The recovery of the tourism industry was well seen by the end of 2022, with the Philippine Statistics Authority attesting that tourism contributed 6.2 percent to our GDP and contributed no less than Php 1.87 trillion combined visitor receipts for international and domestic,” she said in a statement. \”Most importantly, this resulted in the employment of our fellow Filipinos in the number of 5.35 million tourism-related jobs.”
Among the foreign tourists, South Koreans are the country’s top visitors with 1.04 million arrivals. They were followed by those from the USA with 679,090; Japan with 221,671; China with 194,258; and Australia with 187,143.
