International visitors arrivals in the first six months breached the 4-million mark for the first time on record amid the influx of East Asian tourists, data from the Tourism Department show.
The agency said international visitor arrivals rose 11.4 percent in the first half to 4.13 million from 3.7 million a year ago, on the back of the 21-percent increase in June.
“We have already breached the 4 million mark within the first six months of the year. Seven years ago, it took the entire year to reach 4 million tourists,” said Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat.
Puyat said local tourism came a long way with better and increased connectivity with rehabilitated and expanded airports contributing to growth.
“By expanding our portfolio of tourism products and by developing and promoting our lesser-known but emerging destinations, we have attracted a large yet diverse set of foreign travelers and have sustained our growth in the highly-competitive South East Asian region,” she said.
The department said tourist arrivals in June, climbed 21.4 percent to 643,780 from 530,267 in the same month last year.
South Korea remained the top source market, followed by China, the United States, Japan and Taiwan.
The Tourism Department also welcomed the US Homeland Security’s decision to lift its public notice on travel against Ninoy Aquino International Airport following the “significant improvements” in the airport’s security operations.
“With the recent development of the US Department of Homeland Security to rescind its public advisory on security issues at Naia, we can expect more travelers from the US to visit the Philippines in the coming months,” Puyat said.
The US Homeland Security in its travel advisory in December 2018 said Naia “does not maintain and carry out out effective security consistent with the security standards established by ICAO.
“After months of direct engagement with the United States, the government of the Philippines has made significant improvements to the security operations of MNL. Both the Manila International Airport Authority and the government of the Philippines civil aviation security authorities have demonstrated they are willing to work toward sustaining those improvements,” the US department said.
Global air traffic picked up in June on solid passenger demand, according to the International Air Transport Association.
It said that demand, measured in revenue passenger kilometers or RPKs, rose 5 percent in June from a year ago, faster than the 4.7-percent growth recorded in May.
“June continued the trend of solid passenger demand growth while the record load factor shows that airlines are maximizing efficiency. Amid continuing trade tensions between the US and China, and rising economic uncertainty in other regions, growth was not as strong as a year ago, however,” said IATA director-general Alexandre de Juniac.
Data from IATA show that Asia-Pacific airlines recorded a 4-percent growth in air traffic in June.
It said, however, that US-China trade tensions had impacted demand in the broader Asia-Pacific-North America market and also within the inter-Asia market.