{"id":169912,"date":"2018-07-08T23:28:45","date_gmt":"2018-07-09T03:28:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=169912"},"modified":"2018-07-08T23:28:45","modified_gmt":"2018-07-09T03:28:45","slug":"10-hike-in-foreign-arrivals-despite-boracay-shutdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/07\/08\/10-hike-in-foreign-arrivals-despite-boracay-shutdown\/","title":{"rendered":"10% hike in foreign arrivals despite Boracay shutdown"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Despite<\/a>
Despite the closure of Boracay Island in April, the January to May 2018 international tourist arrivals still posted a 10.24 percent increase compared to last year’s, the Department of Tourism (DOT) bared on Thursday.(PNA photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA<\/strong>— Despite the closure of Boracay Island in April, the January to May 2018 international tourist arrivals still posted a 10.24 percent increase compared to last year’s, the Department of Tourism (DOT) bared on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The first five months of the year recorded 3.17 million foreign visitors to the Philippines, with South Korea still as the top market for its 708,548 tourists share.<\/p>\n

DOT Undersecretary Benito Bengzon said the January to May statistics may have been driven by the “very strong performance” coming from China.<\/p>\n

China, which had the highest growth rate at 43.81 percent compared in 2017 came next to Korea with 559,289.<\/p>\n

Among the country’s top tourist markets were the United States with 463,273; Japan at 275,943; Australia at 120,598; Canada at 109,133; Taiwan at 101,372, United Kingdom at 89,782; Singapore at 75,862; and Malaysia at 61,040.<\/p>\n

It was earlier feared that the shutdown of Boracay Island, the country’s top tourist draw, would have significant effect on the number of foreign tourists visiting the Philippines.<\/p>\n

But the 10 percent growth for January to May was already “way above the curve” and is at a fairly high level, said Bengzon.<\/p>\n

“May I remind that the figures for January to April, the first four months, were very very good so we had a bit of cushion. So, even with the slowdown in some source markets in May, we were able to keep the overall production for the first five months at a fairly high level, when you\u2019re talking about 10 percent, that’s way above the curve,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA— Despite the closure of Boracay Island in April, the January to May 2018 international tourist arrivals still posted a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":155298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[14175],"class_list":["post-169912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-travel","tag-boracay-island","mauthors-joyce-ann-l-rocamora","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}