Friday, July 25, 2008 Arrivals up but tourists spend less By Adrian Agbon Sun.Star Economic Forum, Academe Committee
WHO are our foreign visitors? How much do they spend when they visit the Philippines? Do we simply care about numbers when talking about foreign tourist arrivals or more on their expenditure?
Stakeholders and policymakers in the tourism industry want answers to these questions.
The tourism industry in the Philippines is a potential source of employment and income for many unemployed Filipinos today. But I believe that we have to seriously evaluate the state of our basic infrastructure, like road maintenance and repair, airport and airport facilities, hotels and restaurants, restoration and preservation of heritage sites and cleanliness—not only of our public comfort rooms, but also entire cities.
So, who have been our foreign visitors in the past decade? In terms of tourist arrival, the East Asians were the biggest group with 47 percent. The biggest bulk of these arrivals come from the Koreans, Japanese and Chinese.
The Americans ranked second at 26 percent, followed by the Europeans, who accounted for 13 percent of the Philippines’ foreign tourist arrivals.
Tourists coming from other countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) made up seven percent of the total, which indicated that Philippines is not be a favorite destination of other Southeast Asians.
Australian tourists, on the other hand, made up only five percent while those from the Middle East accounted for a meager one percent.
But then growth in tourism does not only factor in tourist arrivals. The amount of money tourists spend in one place matters a lot.
From 1995 to 2006, the average daily expenditure of foreign tourists is $122.10 while average length of stay is only nine nights. The highest average daily expenditure was in 1997 at $156.30 while the lowest was in 2006 at $84.2 a day.
Looking at these in terms of percentage changes, both expenditure and length of stay is still negative at 13.3 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively.
Finally, we can wrap this up in terms of tourism receipts for the Philippines. It was in 1997 that we recorded almost $3 billion in tourism receipts. The lowest tourism receipt was in 2003 at $1.6 billion. Still, this translates to a negative percentage change of 5.8 percent in our international tourism receipts.
It is along this line that we have to rethink which market segments we are attracting. I believe that the Department of Tourism’s campaigns and marketing strategies have considered this aspect.
Our policies should also focus more on improving our infrastructure to meet global standards, encouraging and giving better incentives to both investors and entrepreneurs. I hope that in the next couple of years, we will see more and better facilities that we can offer our visitors—foreign and local—and our balikbayans. Tourism, after all, is an experienced good that creates a lasting impression.
