East Asia tops in PH tourism

TOURISTS arriving in the Philippines increased significantly in the first four months of this year. In total 2.073 million visitors came, up 14.25 percent above the figure for the first four months of 2015. Altogether, they have pushed the tourism revenue up 12.34 percent from its year-ago level to a total of P86.66 billion.

Almost half of that number came from the East Asia region. It included 481,596 Koreans, 238,523 mainland Chinese, 183,620 Japanese, and 71,656 Taiwanese. The three fast expanding East Asian sources were China, which registered 88.86 percent increase in the first four months of this year, followed by Taiwan (28.94 percent) and Japan (8.85 percent). Among others, Singapore accounted for 61,033 visitors (2.94 percent), and Malaysia 48,835 (2.35 percent).