Visits by foreigners to the Philippines rose this year despite travel warnings and a bloody hostage fiasco that left eight Hong Kong tourists dead, the immigration bureau said yesterday.
The number of foreign arrivals reached 2.56 million as of Monday last week, up 17 percent from the same period last year, immigration chief Roland Ledesma said in a statement.
“This is a positive sign that despite the negative travel advisories, we are succeeding in our efforts to promote the Philippines as a prime tourist destination,” Ledesma was quoted as saying.
He expressed confidence that tourist arrivals would hit at least 3 million this year as more usually travel to the Philippines in the last two months of the year.
The tourism industry had feared the country would be hit hard by a deadly seige in August when eight Hong Kong tourists were killed by a disgraced policeman who took them hostage in Manila.
The fiasco, which saw numerous mistakes by Manila police, was broadcast worldwide on television and enraged China and Hong Kong, with many Chinese tourists canceling visits to the Philippines.
As a result, the Hong Kong government announced a “black” travel alert, while China issued its own travel warning for the Philippines.
In another setback, several Western nations including the US, Britain and Australia issued advisories this month, warning that an attack may be staged at any time in the Philippines, possibly targeting foreigners.
The immigration bureau said its records showed that Americans were the top foreign nationals coming to the country with 679,406 recorded in the first 10 months of the year.
South Koreans were second at 525,564, followed by Japanese at 331,156 and Chinese at 229,989, the bureau said.
Government statistics show that there were 3.017 million tourist arrivals last year, down 3.9 percent from 2008.
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