Tourist arrivals up by 2%

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MANILA – A data from the Department of Tourism showed that the country’s tourist arrivals for the six months of 2014 increased by 2.22 percent to 2.43 million.

For the month of June alone, arrivals reached 372,293 or 0.87 percent more than the 369,073 in the same period last year.

The increase is following the growing number of Asian arrivals which outnumbered its Western counterparts.

Arrivals from the Asian region alone accounted for 58.78 percent, a figure higher than the Americas and Europe which comprised only 19.28 percent and 10.64 percent, respectively.

In Asia, South Korea still has the highest number of international visitors with visitors with 547,971 arrivals comprising 22.52-percent share to total inbound traffic.

Growing by 6.84 percent, the US market is ranked second in terms of the influx of arrivals with 389,432 visitors, thus constituting 16 percent of the total inbound traffic.

The Chinese market also provided a total of 226,163 visitors with a share of 9.29 percent.

Japan and Austrailia also grew at 5.03 percent and 8.13 percent respectively. Japan has overall 220,366 visitors, and constituting 9.06 percent market share, while Austrailia has 111,687 arrivals.

The ten visitor markets include Singapore (+6.26 percent) with 91,692 arrivals, Canada (+10.59 percent) with 75,677 arrivals, United Kingdom (+13.88 percent) with 68,593 arrivals, Taiwan (-21.91 percent) with 67,213 arrivals, and Malaysia (+23.34 percent) with 66,796 arrivals.