India a major tourist market this year - DOT
Metro Manila, Philippines - Indian tourists will be a major target market group this year as the number of Chinese visitors have declined, the Department of Tourism (DOT) said on Wednesday, Jan. 22.
Citing data from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Secretariat, Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco said 79,000 visited the Philippines out of over five million Indians travelers last year.
“Not very big,” Frasco told a forum in Manila on Wednesday, Jan. 22. “And so, we are aggressively advocating for liberalized policies in terms of visa issuance for the Indian market coming into the country.”
She said the figure marked a 12.8% growth from 2023 arrivals. Wedding and diving events were popular to Indian visitors, she added.
Frasco said joint working group meetings and business missions have been set to prepare for the possible visitor influx. She did not set a target for 2025 pending measures to improve connectivity and liberalize visa processing.
“The interest of Air India is quite robust and they are now in the process of documentary compliance with regulatory bodies in the Philippines. I hope the flights from India can be mounted within the first semester of this year,” she told reporters in a chance interview.
In a statement, the DOT said it hopes Air India will soon connect Indian cities directly to Manila, Boracay, Clark, and Cebu. While connectivity to New Delhi is through Manila, there are no direct flights between the two capitals.
Frasco held a bilateral meeting with Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Indian minister of culture and tourism, on the sidelines of the 28th Meeting of the ASEAN Tourism Ministers on Sunday.
“The number of tourists inflow to both the countries is going to increase, and certainly, the share of the total number of tourists, Indian tourists visiting to the ASEAN countries, Philippines deserves much, much more,” Shekhawat told Frasco, according to a DOT release.
The Philippine Tour Operators Association, Inc. (PHILTOA) supported the plan.
“Good target sila [They are a good target], not only for leisure but also for business exploration kasi [because] they tend to study,” PHILTOA 1st Vice President Malou Japson told NewsWatch Plus on Friday.
“But the problem is Indians are mostly vegetarian so I guess one thing that we should consider also is restaurants with Indian food and also hotels that cater to Indian food,” she added.
Recovering Chinese market
Frasco earlier reported only around 300,000 Chinese tourists visited the country in 2024, far from the projected two million. The shrink resulted in only 5.9 million foreign arrivals last year instead of the 7.7 million target.
In a briefing aired over government channel PTV, Frasco said “nobody could have anticipated that geopolitics would ultimately seep into arrivals from China” amid the suspension of electronic visas to the East Asian giant.
Recently, Philippine authorities arrested a Chinese national for alleged spying, among other tensions such as the disputed West Philippine Sea.
“These incidents pertain to national security issues, which are beyond the purview of the Department of Tourism and beyond the purview of tourism in general,” Frasco said during the forum.
“So we continue to advocate to recover the Chinese market as far as tourism is concerned,” she added.
‘Love the Philippines’ campaign to stay
Meanwhile, Frasco said the DOT would continue to push for the “Love the Philippines” brand campaign after seeing “quite high” effectiveness due to increases in market recovery in source markets such as Europe and the Middle East.
Frasco said the DOT would capitalize on the direct connectivity to Europe through a “focused marketing campaign” in France and nearby countries, while her agency also saw “very, very encouraging growth” from the Middle East.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has directed his Cabinet to restore around P400 million to DOT’s funding to sustain its campaign this year, sourcing from the chief executive’s contingency fund, bringing the total to P500 million, according to a Malacañang news release.
