FROM THE FRINGES: Tourism and Statistics

FROM THE FRINGES: Tourism and Statistics

By Jerome Aning | September 18, 2026

September is Tourism Month in the Philippines, celebrated by the Department of Tourism (DOT), its regional offices and attached agencies, as well as local government units, and the country’s tourism industry sector. There is actually no formal government issuance designating a month for tourism.  In the 1950s, various presidents declared tourist promotion months and tourism months annually to give publicity to certain tourism-generating activities and to show government support for tourism development by the private sector.  In 2007, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, recognizing health and wellness as a major sector for economic growth, declared October of every year as National Health and Wellness Tourism Month, with the aim of instilling greater awareness and heightened consciousness and understanding of the importance of the said sector.

The other official tourism-related celebration is National Tourism Week, first set in 1990 by President Corazon Aquino on the first week of May to remind the citizenry of the importance of tourism industry to the overall development efforts of the country. In 1996, the observance was moved by President Fidel Ramos to the last week of September to coincide with World Tourism Day (WTD), which has been marked on Sept. 27 by the United Nations World Tourism Organization since 1980.  This year’s WTD theme is “Digital Agenda and Artificial Intelligence to Redesign Tourism” which explores how AI can help create smarter, more inclusive and sustainable tourism by enhancing decision-making, strengthening skills, and improving the way destinations are experienced and managed.

The tourism beat, which I covered twice during my stint as a newspaper reporter, is one of the interesting assignments I encountered in my journalistic career.  I covered Tourism Secretaries Richard Gordon, Ace Durano, Wanda Tulfo-Teo and Berna Romulo-Puyat, who brought their unique perspectives on tourism development.  As I was handling other beats at the same time, my coverage was rather limited to politics, policies and pronouncements of the DOT, its attached agencies, and tourism industry groups.  The hospitality sector and travel beats are the domains of the business and lifestyle reporters, respectively. If my schedule allows it, I traveled outside Metro Manila to cover tourism-related events attended by the secretary.

As a journalist, I can say that each secretary’s contribution to the DOT and the tourism sector depended on their background.  Gordon, former Olongapo City mayor and Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority chairman, worked on promotion, with his “Wow Philippines” campaign reverberating for a decade. Durano, a former Cebu congressman, prioritized tourism infrastructure to give the Philippines a better competitive edge over its regional neighbors. His tenure saw the enactment of the Tourism Act of 2009 which adopted a national tourism policy rationalize the operation of the DOT and its agencies.  Amid the global efforts to curb international terrorism in the first decade of this century, Gordon and Durano also prioritized travel safety as the government dealt with travel advisories issued by foreign countries affecting the entirety or portions of the Philippines.

Teo, a travel agent who later became president of the National Association of Independent Travel Agencies (NAITAS), focused on efforts to revitalize the tourism private sector through assistance in product development and improvement of tourism workers’ welfare. Puyat, a skillful bureaucrat, emphasized accountability, sustainability, and resiliency, all of which became important during the pandemic years. I remember DOT’s serious and fruitful initiatives under Teo and Puyat to develop specific tourism subsectors such as religious, heritage, gastronomic, halal, mall, diving, cruise and farm tourism.  Their tenures also saw Philippine tourism destinations getting more international awards and citations.

Increasing the number of foreign tourist arrivals in the country—to record-breaking levels, as much as possible—is a major goal of the DOT and tourism industry stakeholders. The arrival statistics sort of became a near-obsession for many tourism officials I encountered, as if the numbers were somehow the “grade” of secretary, the DOT and the stakeholders.  Constant media reporting on the statistics inevitably resulted in the public perception that a decline in arrivals or a low number of arrivals compared to neighboring countries meant the failure of our tourism promotion and development efforts, or worse, the misuse of the government funds allotted for tourism.

However, a few tourism stakeholders explained to me that the more important statistics are the so-called tourism receipts, or the total expenditures by foreign visitors. The late Robert Joseph Lim, NAITAS chairman emeritus and honorary consul of Latvia, said that the Philippines’ promotion efforts should focus more on tourists who tend, or could afford, to spend more while traveling. Lim said the Philippines may never match the arrival statistics of its neighbors such as Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia or Malaysia which are geographically near one another and better connected by air and sea.  For example, a foreign tourist arriving in Singapore could stay there a few days then go to Phuket, Thailand, return to Singapore, then fly to Bali in Indonesia or Penang in Malaysia, and return to Singapore again. For every arrival in Singapore, the tourist is counted separately or per entry.  Another thing is that many international, multinational and regional organizations and companies are headquartered in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, and the visitors going there to attend meetings, conventions and conferences are regarded as tourists.  Lim pointed out traveling that to the Philippines is usually a special destination of sorts for a foreign tourist as it is quite inconvenient and expensive to proceed to another country afterwards. This is why tourism stakeholders must make every foreign tourist’s visit pleasant, worthwhile and memorable so that he or she would come back, and, who knows, bring along friends or family members.

Arrival statistics, however, still matter as they aid DOT and other tourism stakeholders in their promotion and planning efforts.  These numbers and figures are often used to craft plans and plot strategies to not only maintain existing markets but also to develop potential ones.

Last Wednesday, the DOT launched on its website the Philippine Tourism Data Dashboard, an open data platform that gives the public direct access to the country’s key tourism indicators.  The dashboard lets users explore how many tourists have come in and gone out of the country month by month since 2010. Incumbent Tourism Secretary Dita Angara-Mathay said the dashboard reflects the agency’s commitment to transparency as a foundation for stronger tourism growth. 

“Making this information available to the public is not just about transparency for its own sake. It is about giving our stakeholders, from local government units to tourism businesses to ordinary Filipinos, the tools to understand how our industry is doing and where the opportunities are.  When people can see the data for themselves, they become part of the effort to grow tourism, not just observers of it,” Mathay said.

As of 31 August 2026, according to the dashboard, there were 4,415,860 visitor arrivals, 0.78% higher than the 4,381,585 arrivals recorded over the same period in 2025. The United States leads the country’s source markets for the period, with 926,575 arrivals, or 20.98% of the total, followed by last year’s top market, South Korea, with 744,732 visitor arrivals, or 16.86%, and Japan, with 321,545 arrivals or 7.3 percent.  The figures come from the eTravel records from the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and records from the Bureau of Immigration.

Beyond visitor counts, the dashboard also tracks Tourism Direct Gross Value Added (TDGVA) data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), a measure of how much tourism contributes to the country’s economy. This includes breakdown by industry, showing which parts of the tourism sector—from accommodation to transport to food and beverage services—generated the biggest share of tourism’s economic contribution. In 2025, TDGVA amounted to P2.27 trillion, or about 8.1 percent, with shopping, services and accommodation being the top sources.

As the sector’s stakeholders say, tourism means jobs.  The dashboard will also track “tourism characteristic employment” or the jobs created by industries that produce goods and services typically purchased by visitors, such as hotels, restaurants, and transport services.  It will also show total national employment against tourism characteristic employment and tourism’s share of jobs nationwide.

Speaking about tourism in his previous State-of-the-Nation Addresses, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. cited the need to promote the Filipino brand that is rooted in our rich cultural heritage, directed focus on “experiential tourism”, and urged the revision of the “one-town, one product” approach. Backed by data-based plans and strategies, prudent tourism promotion and tourism infrastructure spending will go hand in hand in ensuring that the country’s international and domestic tourism policies and programs remain profitable, competitive and attuned to the needs and realities of the present times.

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