Hanoi (VNA) – The Philippines’ tourism revenue made a record high of 9.31 billion USD in 2019, a year-on-year rise of 20.8 percent, the country’s Department of Tourism (DOT) revealed on March 3.
Aside from all-time high earnings, 2019 also witnessed several tourism milestones, including welcoming 8.2 million international visitors.
DOT Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat said these figures confirmed the importance of the tourism sector as a key economic growth driver of the Philippines.
According to her, foreign visitors to the Philippines incurred 128.35 USD average daily spending while the average per capita spending for a whole trip is estimated at 1,218.04 USD on an average stay of 9.49 nights.
The double-digit growth in visitor was observed from February to December 2019, with August exhibiting the highest growth at 31.45 percent. Meanwhile, the largest spending volume was recorded in December at 872.13 million USD, she added.
Based on data from the DOT, the top visitor market, the Republic of Korea, posted the highest tourism spending of about 2.6 billion USD, followed by China with 2.3 billion USD and the United States with 1.2 billion USD./.
VNA