Tourism numbers

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While on a cruise to Alaska many years ago, I was surprised to find a thriving Filipino community in a town that could be reached only by seaplane or boat.

As we were about to dock in the city of Juneau, I saw a streamer from PCIBank encouraging the Filipino crew of our ship to use their services there. I found out that Filipinos, the largest minority group in the city, are a cornerstone of Juneau’s history and modern economy.

It must be nearly impossible to find a country or a place without a single Filipino. Filipinos have reached almost every corner of the earth. In Greenland, there are about a thousand Pinoys, topping the list of nationalities there.

Pinoys also love to travel for leisure. Indeed, more Filipino tourists traveled abroad last year (2025) than foreign tourists visited our country.

According to reports from the Department of Tourism and the Bureau of Immigration, about 7.64 million Filipinos traveled overseas last year. Only about 6.5 million international visitors were recorded in 2025 and that includes returning overseas Filipinos or balikbayans.

Interestingly, despite having fewer foreign visitors compared to outbound locals, foreign tourists in the Philippines spent more per arrival than what Filipino tourists spent abroad, contributing to a significant net tourism revenue of approximately P694 billion in 2025.

That helped the Philippines top other ASEAN members in terms of the economic impact of the tourism sector.

According to an economist at the Asian Development Bank, the Philippine tourism sector contributed $91.8 billion to the gross domestic product or GDP. The tourism sector of Thailand, one of the top tourism performers in ASEAN, only contributed $67.3 billion.

The numbers are a little difficult to believe because Thailand has a bigger tourism industry with more hotels, resorts and far more visitors than the Philippines.

Apparently, the discrepancy between visitor volume and economic impact is primarily driven by three factors: massive domestic tourism, higher spending per visitor and different economic structures.

While Thailand leads in international arrivals (35 million in 2024 compared to the six million plus of the Philippines), the Philippine tourism industry is heavily powered by its local population. This, despite local travel being more expensive for Filipinos compared to going abroad.

In 2024, the Philippines recorded approximately 134 million domestic trips. The domestic market was valued at over $70 billion, making it the largest in the region. In contrast, Thailand’s tourism model is more reliant on international spending.

Another factor is the higher revenue per international tourist arrival in the Philippines. Perhaps the Philippines has successfully shifted toward a “quality over quantity” model, earning more from each individual visitor than many of its neighbors.

Receipts per arrival in the Philippines as of late 2025 reached $1,631, which is considerably higher than the Southeast Asian average of $1,085.

The average length of stay for visitors in the Philippines was 11 nights in 2024. The broader holiday average is much lower (around 5.75 days) in the region, with transit-heavy hubs like Singapore averaging only 3.55 days. Most visitors to the Philippines arrive with the intent of island hopping, diving or long-stay holidays.

Roughly 70 percent of international tourists in the Philippines are repeat visitors, who tend to stay longer and spend more.

Stella Arnaldo who writes about tourism for the BusinessMirror reports that UP economist Dante Canlas cited the “denominator effect.” The share of tourism in the GDP is influenced by the size and diversity of the overall national economy.

Thailand has a larger total GDP and a massive manufacturing export sector (valued at over $300 billion), which accounts for 70 percent of its GDP. This makes tourism a smaller piece of its economic pie (12.8 percent) compared to the Philippines (19.9 percent).

But the Philippine tourism sector is a major job generator, supporting 11.2 million jobs (23 percent of national employment). This high labor intensity contributes significantly to the “value-added” component of the GDP.

Then again, the higher economic “earnings” also reflect the higher cost of travel within the Philippines.

Due to its archipelagic geography, transportation logistics (flights and ferries between islands) are more expensive and complex than Thailand’s well-integrated rail and road networks. This results in higher total spending per trip by both domestic and international tourists.

The higher cost of tourism in the Philippines is now a hot topic on social media. The reaction of the DOT is to review the deregulated nature of our airline industry which is way off the mark.

The problem is infrastructure. The airports in popular destinations like Siargao, El Nido and Batanes are short, forcing airlines to use smaller planes with less passenger capacity.

The solution, as the DOTr saw it, is to increase the runway lengths of airports to allow airlines to use bigger planes like the A320 and make airports capable for night flights.

Learn from Boracay. By extending the runway in Caticlan to accommodate narrowbody jets like the Airbus A320, which carries up to 180 passengers, airlines were able to significantly lower the “cost per seat” compared to the 72-seater turboprop aircraft previously used.

As of February 2026, the typical nonstop prices from Manila to Caticlan now frequently start below P1,500 during seat sales.

Average round-trip flights from Manila to Caticlan during the turboprop era frequently ranged from P4,000 to P7,000 for a standard booking. During busy seasons, prices often exceeded P8,000 to P10,000, as there were fewer seats available compared to modern Airbus A320 aircraft.

Forcing the airlines to reduce fares will discourage airlines from investing in new aircraft which eventually means less and more expensive flights all over the country. It is basic economics that this Cabinet member did not learn from wherever she got her college degree.

So, we have every reason to shine in the region’s tourism sector. But we must use our brains more and do our homework to encourage tourists to visit.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco.