BAGUIO CITY—Tourism industry stakeholders have projected close to two million tourist arrivals in the Cordillera region this year, helping spur economic growth and development in the countryside.
Maria Venus Q. Tan, Department of Tourism-Cordillera Administrative Region regional director, said for the first six months of this year, the region saw over 959,000 foreign and domestic tourist arrivals in the different parts of the region, with Baguio accounting for over 730,000 arrivals.
Last year, data obtained from the DoT-CAR showed a total of 1,788,648 foreign and domestic tourist arrivals around the region. Domestic tourists numbered 1,670,484, while foreign tourists totaled 117,241 and balikbayans were at 923 arrivals.
DoT-CAR projected 1,878,080 total tourists regionwide, with domestic tourists projected at 1,754,008, foreign tourists pegged at 123,103, and balikbayans to be 969 arrivals.
The tourist arrivals in 2016 were already 19.87 percent more than the 1.49 million posted in 2015, and 87.3 percent more than the 955,133 recorded in 2011, the agency added.
Based on the tourist arrivals for the first semester of this year, the region will overshoot its projections considering the influx of tourists during the last quarter of the year, DOT-CAR. The region is popular during the Christmas season and even for the long weekends this November.
Tan said there has been a sustained influx of visitors to Baguio and other preferred destinations in the region during weekends because of the easier access to the city from the lowlands courtesy of the 88-kilometer Tarlac-Pangasinan-La Union Expressway. TPLEX has reduced travel time from Metro Manila to as low as 3 hours.
She attributed the sustained growth in tourist arrivals in the region “to the aggressive development of the different road networks that link to the leading tourist destinations in the different parts of the region.”
Tan expressed her gratitude to the “overwhelming support” provided by the local governments in aggressively promoting their existing and soon-to-be explored tourist spots.