Visitor arrivals in the Philippines reached 4.44 million in the nine months to September, up 9.9 percent from the year-earlier period, with nearly half accounted for by South Korean tourists, data from the Department of Tourism showed Thursday.
If the Korean visitor flow averaging 493,000 a month is sustained in the final three months, the total for this year could reach 5.9 million, higher than last year’s total of 5.5 million but still short of the 7.7 million target for 2024.
Data show that tourists from South Korea increased 12 percent to 1.2 million in the first nine months of the year, around 27 percent of the total visitor arrivals for the period. In September alone, South Korean visitor arrivals declined to 119,020 from 145,431 in August.
Visitors from the US total 694,142 in the January-September period, up 1.7 percent year-on-year.
During the nine-month period, visitors from Japan increased 32 percent to 293,658 while those from China rose 30 percent to 260,134.
Australia completes the top five foreign markets for the Philippine tourism industry even as total visitors declined 0.6 percent in the January-September period to 187,344.
