The Philippines welcomed a total of 5,949,350 visitor arrivals, falling well short of its targeted 7.7 million arrivals according to figures from the Department of Tourism (DOT).
But the year still finished on a high, with the 598,493 arrivals in representing the Philippines’ highest monthly visitor tally since January 2020.
The DOT’s end-of-year tourism statistics show a total of 5,949,350 visitor arrivals as of the end of December, comprising 5,438,697 foreign tourists and 510,383 overseas Filipinos.
This included 598,493 arrivals in December, of which 520,549 were foreign tourists. Of those, 133,500 were from South Korea, followed by the United States with 108,256 and Australia with 40,744.
China ranked seventh among source markets with 14,618 arrivals in December, although it ranked fourth for FY24 with a total of 312,222 arrivals.
The final 2024 visitor arrival figure represents a 9.15% improvement over 2023 but is still only back to 84% of 2019 levels.
However, DOT Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco told local media last week that while raw visitation is still recovering, visitor spending has already surpassed pre-COVID spending at US$2,073 per capita. They are also staying longer at around 11 nights per visit compared with nine nights in 2019.
“Therefore, beyond quantity, we are attracting quality, yielding more revenues for our stakeholders, (and) more jobs for our people,” said Franco, as reported by the Philippine Star. “And as we have focused on elevating the quality of tourism in the Philippines and diversifying our tourism products, tourists are staying longer in the Philippines.”
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