Tourist arrivals up by 13% in January-May

TOURIST arrivals in the Philippines posted a double-digit growth in the first five months to May this year to 1.8 million, the Department of Tourism (DOT) said on Friday.

The DOT said the January to May arrivals were 13 percent higher compared to the 1.6 million visitors recorded during the same period of last year.

Visitor traffic for the period was boosted by the Korean market as they comprised the biggest group with a share of 21.83 percent or 397,170 arrivals.

"This market registered a double-digit increase of 12.41 percent versus its arrivals of 353,307 a year ago," the DOT said.

Visitors from the United States supplied the second biggest arrival with 298,355 and expanded by 5.26 percent vis-à-vis its corresponding arrivals of 283,422 visitors the previous year.

The US market shared 16.40 percent of the total arrivals.

Coming in third were visitors from Japan with a volume of 167,410 arrivals and an increase of 7.11 percent compared to its contribution of 156,296 in 2011. This market comprised 9.20 percent of the total visitors to the country.

The Chinese market came in fourth with arrivals aggregating to 138,466 and a share of 7.61 percent to the overall traffic.

"This market recorded the highest growth of 59.07 percent among the top five country markets for the period when compared to its arrivals of 87,049 visitors a year ago," the department said.

Taiwan ranked fifth by registering 93,855 arrivals, constituting 5.16 percent of inbound traffic. Arrivals from this market grew by 35.43 percent.

High yielding markets such as Australia (79,020 visitors), Singapore (60,136 visitors), Canada (58,868 visitors), United Kingdom (50,327 visitors) and Hong Kong (48,849 visitors) provided significant volume of arrivals for the period also.

On the other hand, high growth markets included Russia (with 42.18 percent growth), Germany (with 14.43 percent growth) and Malaysia (with 12.82 percent growth). (SDR/Sunnex)