‘Philippine tourism industry bounced back in 2021’

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines’ tourism and travel industry bounced back in 2021, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), which also forecast that the sector’s contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) will grow by almost seven percent over the next decade.

At a press conference yesterday, WTTC president and chief executive officer Julia Simpson said that based on their latest economic impact report, the Philippine tourism sector’s contribution to GDP is seen to grow by 6.7 percent by 2032.

Simpson said this exceeds the expected overall economy average growth rate of 5.6 percent.

The WTTC study also found that the industry’s contribution to GDP could be worth more than $155 million in 10 years, accounting for 21.4 percent of the economy.

“With travel and tourism employment forecast to grow annually by an average of three percent over the next 10 years, nearly three million new jobs could be created, accounting for 21.5 percent of all jobs in the Philippines,” Simpson added.

The WTTC said the Philippines’ tourism industry contributed $41 billion to the economy in 2021.

This is 129.5 percent higher compared to the figure in 2020, the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, which saw an 81 percent reduction from the 2019 figure of $93 billion.

There was also a 20.5 percent rise in the number of tourism jobs, for a total of 7.8 million.

“Our expert analysis shows that the economy has turned a corner and is firmly on the road to recovery,” Simpson said.

At the same press conference, Tourism Secretary Berna Romulo-Puyat said the country is already seeing signs of recovery.

While she admitted that the 2019 levels of tourism in the country could not be attained soon, the country is ”getting there.”

“We are also still working on making [travel] easier and seamless for all travelers,” she said.

From Feb. 10 to April 17, the Department of Tourism reported about 272,000 foreign arrivals.

Favorable conditions

The Philippines has favorable conditions for tourism recovery as it continues to open its borders to travelers but full rebound of the industry badly hit by the pandemic will take time, the UK-based The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) said.

Based on Asia’s Travel-Ready Index 2022 of EIU, the Philippines ranked 13th among 28 economies with an overall score of 3.75.

A lower score indicates more favorable conditions for tourism recovery such as Fiji, which topped the index with a score of 1.95.

Hong Kong, on the other hand, ranked last with 6.6.

The index took into account three factors that might affect international tourists’ sentiment: vaccination coverage in the destination, ease of travel and convenience of returning home.

For the Philippines, ease of travel got the highest score at 1.25 following the downgrade of restriction in most parts of the country and the removal of strict requirements such as quarantine for fully vaccinated foreign tourists.

The government has been relaxing the rules for both domestic and international tourists in the country as it moves to recover from the pandemic that hit the travel industry for the past two years.

“The infectious Omicron variant has accelerated convergence of COVID transmission profiles across the world, rendering border measures less meaningful. This has accelerated reopenings, with Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore and the Philippines announcing broad liberalization in March and April,” the EIU said.

For vaccination, however, the Philippines scored 5.83 as the 60 percent of Filipinos already fully vaccinated remains low compared with other Asian countries that are nearing full vaccination status.

The inoculation of booster shots in the country has also been relatively slow.

“Widening vaccine access and coverage, along with the subsiding lethal nature of COVID, provides a window of opportunity for Asian economies to reopen confidently,” EIU said.

Further, the EIU warned that China’s reimposition of stringent measures may slow the recovery of many countries in the region, especially as China was the most important tourism source market for Asian economies before the pandemic.

Out of the 28 economies in the index, 13 relied on China as their top source of visitors and six as their second-largest source.

For the Philippines, China was the second largest source of foreign tourists with 21 percent, next to Korea’s 24 percent.

However, it slipped to third spot in 2020 with just 12 percent. The US replaced China as the second largest source of tourists in the country during the first year of the pandemic.

The EIU maintained that most Asian markets will see only a partial recovery this year, with tourist arrivals and receipts still far below 2019 levels. – Louise Maureen Simeon