Japanese tourist arrivals grows only by 3.93 percent

The growth of Japanese tourist arrivals in Cebu has slowed down in 2006, with only 3.93 percent increase from the double-digit growth enjoyed in the past.

Latest record from the Department of Tourism (DOT-7) showed that there were only a total of 117,000 Japanese that visited Cebu in 2006, a little improvement from 112,921 Japanese tourist arrivals in Cebu in the previous year.

DOT-7 regional director Patria Aurora Roa said that in her recent visit to Japan, she had to decline some package tours supposedly bound for Cebu, because of room shortage.

"Japanese are high-end tourists, they like to stay in five-star resorts. But we have only very limited five-star resort rooms in Cebu, and majority of which are already booked by huge Korean tourists," Roa said.

According to Roa the interest of Japanese nationals to re-consider Cebu as a destination has improved since the 9/11 incident, however, Cebu can not accommodate most of them anymore.

On the other hand, Korean visitors continued to surge, with arrival improvement of 13 percent to 165,309 Korean nationals in Cebu in 2006.

Overall, international arrivals to Cebu registered an increase of 17.17 percent, Koreans as the top notchers, followed closely by Japanese, Americans, Taiwanese, Hong Kong-Chinese, Australians, British, Germans, Chinese from China, and Canadians.

On the other hand, DOT secretary Joseph Ace Durano earlier announced the opening of about 1,000 within in this year.

A total of about 3,000 new rooms will be added to the entire Central Visayas region, including Boracay area this year, of which over 1,000 will be set up within Cebu province.

The over 1,000 rooms, as an additional to the existing 12,000 room accommodations in Cebu, will be those hotels or resorts that will be operational within this year, not including the resorts or hotels that are only being constructed, like the Imperial Palace in Mactan Island, which will open next year yet.

"These [new rooms] are what we call 'relevant rooms' that are sellable to the international market, offering three-star, to five-star service standard," Durano said in an interview.

The Philippines had reportedly lost about 500,000 Japanese tourists last year because of room shortage problem.

Philippine Convention and Visitors Corporation (PCVC) senior consultant Colin Marson said Japanese travelers chose to go to other destinations like Phuket, Bali and Guam, because these countries have invested so much in their marketing promotions to the Japanese market.