Friday, July 04, 2008 Foreign tourist arrivals in RP By Adrian Agbon Sun.Star Economic Forum, Academe Committee
TRAVEL and tourism is an essential part of the development of human civilization. There are plenty of reasons for people to travel. These include pilgrimage, leisure, migration, health and, in most cases, search for better opportunities.
Today, the travel industry is one of the fastest growing economic sectors in terms of foreign exchange earnings and job creation. For these reasons, many developing economies like the Philippines put tourism industry development in the national agenda. The Medium Term Philippine Development Program (MTPDP) of the Arroyo administration acknowledges the role of tourism in poverty alleviation and job creation. I believe this has some merits, given the fact that the industry is labor intensive.
Tourism Secretary Joseph Ace Durano had mentioned that the country’s tourism potential is not yet maximized, so there is a need to promote the Philippines as tourist destination haven. In fact, several programs, such as WOW Philippines, as well as cultural and trade shows, were launched by Department of Tourism (DOT) to attract foreign tourists to the country.
Let us try to look at the trends in international tourist arrivals in the Philippines.
The Philippines’ international tourist arrivals started to increase in 1995 and peaked in 1997, with two million arrivals. But the arrivals declined starting 1998 due to the currency crisis that affected most Asian economies. In 2001, foreign tourist arrivals fell to 1.7 million.
But beginning 2002, the number of foreign visitors to the Philippines showed moderate recovery with 1.8 arrivals until 2003. In 2004 to 2006, the figure reached two million.
I am hopeful that this will increase in the next years given the aggressiveness of the DOT’s promotional campaigns. These recent figures tell us that the efforts of our government to put the country in the global tourism map are working.
But while the country is able to lure an increasing number of foreign tourists, our neighbors—Malaysia and Thailand—are way ahead. Malaysia’s international tourist arrivals was 17.5 million in 2006, making Malaysia the favorite destination among Asean countries. About 13. 9 million foreign tourists visited Thailand in the same year.
Another aspect to look at is tourist spending, which I believe is what matters most to the host country. Bigger spending per day means higher multiplier effect on the local economy. The length of stay of tourists is another aspect to consider.
With these trends, some questions come up: What kind and who are the tourists visiting the country? Are our campaigns and marketing strategies effective in terms of attracting higher spending foreign tourists to visit the Philippines? Alternatively, is traveling to the Philippines an inferior good?
