Manila – The Philippines on Friday hoped to attract 4 million Chinese tourists annually by the end of 2022, a Philippine tourism official said.
The official stressed that the government was stepping up efforts to lure more Chinese nationals to visit the South-East Asian country.
The Chief Tourism Operations Officer of the Philippine Department of Tourism (DOT), Raymund Agustin, said the government was taking measures to smoothen the entry of Chinese tourists.
“First, we have to remove the barriers to ease the entry of Chinese tourists into the country,” Agustin said.
According to him, DOT is working closely with the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs and the country’s Bureau of Immigration to simplify the visas of Chinese nationals.
“The other one is flights, we need to find more routes, from China directly to the destinations in the Philippines. We will like most of our international gateways to have direct flights from China.
“China now is the Philippines’ fastest growth foreign market and second-largest source of foreign tourists,” he said.
According to DOT, in the first 10 months of 2019, a total of 1,499,524 Chinese tourists visited the Philippines, representing a 41.13 per cent increase from the same period in 2018.
“With this growth of arrival, also comes a record growth in tourism receipts and job opportunities for the Philippines. By the end of the year 2022.
“ DOT expects the target arrivals of the Chinese tourists is almost 4 million each year, which means we need an average of 30 per cent growth in the next three years.“
The DOT said a total of 1,255,258 Chinese tourists visited the Philippines in 2018 and more than 300 flights were shuttling between different cities of China and the Philippines on weekly bases.
However, both countries were expecting more than 1.5 million Chinese tourists to the Philippines in 2019, which would generate more than 32 billion pesos (or roughly 630 million U.S. dollars) of revenue for the Philippine economy.
According to the Philippines Statistics Authority, the country is hoping to reach its target of 8.2 million total foreign tourist arrivals in 2019, 1 million higher than in 2018.
Tourism industries contributed 12.7 per cent to the Philippine economy in 2018.