The tourism industry slipped back to 2014 and 2015 levels in terms of value and employment, respectively, in 2021 as new coronavirus 2019 restrictions continued to cripple the sector.
The Philippine Tourism Satellite Accounts (PTSA) compiled by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed the tourism direct gross value-added (TDGVA) – or the total of the GVA of tourism industries that directly serve visitors – rose 9 percent to P1 trillion in 2021 from P917 billion in 2020.
Yet, that is still way below the P2.51 trillion TDGVA pre-pandemic in 2019, setting back the country to 2014 when the TDGVA was P1.1 trillion.
The PTSA report said tourism contribution to the economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, remained at 5 percent in 2021, similar to 2020, compared with 13 percent in 2019.
Employment in tourism characteristic industries was estimated at 4.9 million in 2021, a net of more than 200,000 workers or by 4.6 percent compared with 4.68 million in 2020.
In 2019, the industry employed 5.7 million.
ast year’s employment was 900,000 less than in 2019 and about the size of the workforce in 2015.
The share of employment in tourism industries to total employment in the country was recorded at 11 percent, same as in 2020 compared with 13 percent pre-pandemic.
Among the forms of tourism expenditures, domestic tourism expenditure posted the highest growth in 2021 at 38.7 percent, followed by outbound tourism expenditure at 27.1 percent.
Inbound tourism expenditure recorded a decline of 79.2 percent. Internal tourism expenditure, comprising inbound and domestic tourism expenditure, grew by 16.3 percent.
Inbound tourism expenditure, which refers to the expenditure of non-resident visitors (foreign visitors and Filipinos permanently residing abroad) within the Philippines, shared 0.6 percent to the country’s total exports in 2021.
Domestic tourism expenditure, which covers expenditures of resident visitors within the country either as domestic trip or part of an international trip, contributed 5.4 percent of the household final consumption expenditure. Irma Isip
