Boracay Island (Photo by Don Lejano/INQUIRER.net)
MANILA, Philippines — South Korea is, so far, the Philippines’ top source of tourists this year, the Department of Tourism announced on Friday.
Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco said South Korea has overtaken the United States, which led in terms of foreign tourist arrivals to the Philippines in 2022.
READ: Over 2 million foreign tourist arrivals in 2022 — DOT
“[As] of today, we have over 1.5 million tourist arrivals to the Philippines and our number one top source market is the Koreans,” Frasco said in a statement.
Tourists from South Korea, according to Frasco, are “coming on a daily basis and the numbers are increasing by the day.”
READ: Over 1.4M foreign tourists arrived as of April 5 — DOT
While she did not mention the current record of tourist arrivals from South Korea this year, she cited DOT data that “showed a significant pick up in Korean arrivals since last year.”
From February 10, 2022 – or when the country lifted pandemic-induced travel restrictions – to December 31, 2022, Frasco said there were 428,014 South Korean travelers to the country.
Prior to the pandemic, she said South Korea had always ranked first in visitor arrivals to the Philippines with 1,989,322 in 2019 alone.
But as it had been for other countries, Frasco said tourist arrivals from South Korea “declined drastically during the pandemic, dropping to 338,877 and 6,456 for 2020 and 2021, respectively.”
“Last year, they were at number two, because it is the United States that [provided] our number one top source market. But this year, the Koreans have reclaimed the number one spot,” she said.
The DOT on Thursday conducted welcoming rites for some 1,400 “incentive travelers” from South Korea who will arrive at the Mactan Cebu International Airport in April.
The South Korean travelers – top agents, sellers, and distributors of the Korean branch of US-based company Unicity International – will fly to Cebu in batches on April 9, 13, 17, and 21.