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The Department of Tourism (DOT) foresees a strong recovery for Philippine tourism and expressed optimism in meeting?and even surpassing?industry targets for the year.

Tourism Secretary Christina Garcia Frasco made the assertion Friday while she served as panelist of the latest leg of the Post-SONA Philippine Economic Briefing (PEB) Roadshow of the national government, where she shared updates on the industry’s performance under the Marcos administration.

Frasco noted that from January to July this year, the country’s foreign tourism receipts have already tallied P286 billion.

This figure, she said, is consistent with the over 66 percent tourism international arrivals recovery of the country being higher than the average ASEAN growth of 54 percent, based on the second UNWTO World Tourism Barometer on the Recovery by Region in the first quarter.

Tourism receipts from foreign and domestic visitors for 2022 amounted to P 1.87 trillion showing the momentum towards the phenomenal tourism performance in the first half.

In addition, the Tourism Secretary also shared that as of August 10, the Philippines received 3,376,514 foreign visitor arrivals, which already surpasses 70 percent of the country’s 4.8 million baseline industry target for the entire year.

“These numbers are only seen to grow further especially that the Philippines has now fully opened up to tourism. We’re very grateful to our President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. for prioritizing tourism in his national development agenda,” the tourism secretary said.

In terms of employment, the DOT recorded over 5.35 million individuals employed in tourism-related industries in 2022, which is 93 percent of the industry’s employment figures during the pre-pandemic period of 2019.

Frasco also cited the statement of the economic managers which revealed the rebound of tourism growth as the second driver of economic development in the Philippines for the period January to June. DOT Office of Public Affairs and Advocacy