The Philippines is recalibrating its tourism projections anew as uncertainties over the global economy and travel restrictions continue to beset the industry.
This is after tourist arrivals in 2020 plunged 82 percent while receipts fell 83 percent from their 2019 levels.
Warner Andrada, chief tourism operations officer of the Department of Tourism (DOT) yesterday said the reformulated National Tourism Development Plan which would set the targets until 2022 will have to take into account three scenarios from mild, medium to severe Andrada reported the number of visitors fell to 1.48 million from 8.26 million in 2019 due to travel restrictions imposed to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus disease 2019.
Tourism receipts were at P82.2 billion from P482 billion in 2019.
Domestic tourism fell 78 percent to 24 million visitors versus 109.75 million in 2019.
Undersecretary Dennis Mapa, national statistician, said the share of tourism to the gross domestic product fell to 5.4 percent from 12.8 percent in 2019; slightly lower than the global contribution of 5.4 percent; and also lower by the 10.5 percent five-year average contribution of the sector to the local economy.
Industry’s gross value added stood at P973.3 billion last year from P2.5 trillion in 2019.
Mapa said tourism employment stood at 4.68 million in 2020, 18 percent down from 5.72 million in 2019;
The sector’s contribution to total employment stood at 11.9 percent.
For foreign tourists, Korea continued to be the top source at 338,877 or 82.76 percent of total arrivals.
The United States whose visitors totalled 211,816 dislodged China at second spot with the latter registering, 170,432.
Manila airport received the bulk of arrivals at 948,988 as the other gateways were either closed or with limited operations for the most part of 2020.
