To quote the original post:

The figures are not great;

  1. There were 5.9 million visitors in 2024. That’s 24% below their target.
  1. Only 2.1 million of SouthEast Asia’s 48.5 million tourist arrivals for the first four months of the year were to the Philippines
  1. It ranks 7th out of 9th in South East Asia - below even Cambodia
  1. The numbers today are 30% below the pre-pandemic high in 2019.
  1. Cebu hotels reported that their occupancy rates are now back to pandemic levels.

So what’s going wrong?

My two cents on this;

  1. It’s too expensive. The Philippines is now actually quite an expensive destination. ‘Touristy’ activites like resorts, meals, golf, activities are all overpriced. Just last week I was speaking to a group of Canadian guys at a Mactan resort who were complaining it was more expensive than back home! Once you price yourself into that ‘mid-market’ space there are so many other destinations that offer more. Even domestic tourists are opting to go to Taiwan or Hong Kong because it’s working out cheaper.
  1. Bad PR. For the record, I don’t think the Philippines is that dangerous a place as long as you’re sensible. But it doesn’t matter, the perception is that it is. They just haven’t done enough to create an imagine of a safe destination, especially for families.
  1. It’s exhausting. There just isn’t the infrastructure to support large scale tourism and no matter how well you plan your trip, you’ll probably still end up in the rain at some point trying to haggle with a taxi driver to get back to your hotel.
  1. Lack of exotic intrigue. This might be a bit harsh, but is there really much to see? I mean, sure there’s good beaches, but they don’t seem to get that mid-market tourists don’t want to sit on a beach for two weeks. It’s not a cultural wasteland, but in Cebu for example, you can do Magellan’s Cross and Santo Nino in 20 minutes. The museums haven’t had investment and you feel they could have done so much more - Lapu Lapu v Magellan could have been spun into a tourist site in Mactan but there’s absolutely nothing.

Philippine tourism is NOT in crisis (that is, if you frame it in terms of income to the economy).

There are 5.9 million visitors in 2024. That’s 28% less than in 2019.

What is less mentioned is that 2025 is not yet over, but spending figures are projected to surpass that of 2019.

From World Travel & Tourism Council:

International visitor spending is also on the rise, projected to reach PHP 709.2 billion – up 2.1% on the previous high in 2019, while domestic visitor spending is anticipated to reach PHP 4.1 trillion – a 9.3% increase over its previous peak.

Good news if you work in tourism or you are an owner of one of the businesses.

It’s also true that the statistics can validate the anecdotes that ordinary Filipinos/less well-off foreigners are getting low value-for-money and have to visit elsewhere, so DOT’s top task, assuming there’s a semblance of competency in that agency, is to make sure the industry is sustainable. My take is that it’s a fool’s errand to chase after tourism arrivals for the sake of it—it’s a bubble waiting to pop if the local backlash to overtourism manifests. My thought is that the best approach will be to increase the number of domestic tourists (encourage Filipinos to see their own country) and then encourage spending per capita for foreign tourists (ala Monte Carlo casino only open to foreigners) and make it sustainable by attaining and maintaining a high service standard.